The eight Tauros vehicles rumbled into lateral sixteen and drove through the bore hole into the Reach.
Inside, the rate was slower. They were following the route that Mkoll had marked out, picking up his chalk marks with their headlamps. The ship’s artificers had moved in after the troops and cleared some areas, but space was still tight in places. Where devices had been secured, the drivers had to use extra care not to snag or disturb the packed explosives.
Blenner rode in the first Tauros. He felt the sweat on his back, smelled cold air and exhaust fumes. It was times like this, he thought to himself, when a bottle of sugar pill placebos just didn’t cut it. Where was that nice medicae Curth when you needed her?
‘Easy, easy,’ he urged Perday. Her hands were clenched on the wheel, her eyes wide with concentration and tension.
Two vehicles back, Felyx held onto the cabin cage with one hand and cradled his lasrifle in the other. The empty carry crates rattled in the back of the vehicle.
He was actually doing something, for the first time in his life. He was engaged in an activity that could lead anywhere, and that his mother couldn’t absolutely control with her power and money.
Now it was happening, he wasn’t sure exactly what he thought of it.
‘My arm’s too big,’ said Mklaek.
‘That’s fantastic,’ Banda replied through gritted teeth. Sweat was beading her face. Her arms were beginning to shake through the strain. ‘I can’t hold this much longer, and I can’t lift it any higher.’
‘I just can’t get my arm in under the plate far enough to reach the wire,’ said Mklaek. He looked at Criid. There was panic in his eyes.
Criid got down on her knees beside Banda, pulled off her gloves and rolled her left sleeve up. Her arm was more slender than Mklaek’s. She had a better chance than either Leyr or Chiria.
‘What do I do?’ she asked, gently sliding her hand in under the heavy metal plate.
‘Find the wires,’ said Mklaek, ‘without pulling them out. Gently.’ His hands were bunched tightly together, fingers interlocked, as if he was praying all the while he watched her.
‘Go really slowly,’ he implored her.
‘I am going really slowly,’ Criid replied, reaching further.
‘Not too slowly,’ Banda grunted. ‘I can’t do slowly.’
‘Holy feth,’ Leyr said to Chiria.
‘I can’t look,’ said Chiria.
‘I’ve got them. I’ve got wires!’ Criid said. There was no way to reach in and see what she was doing at the same time. She was groping under the metal slab blind.
‘All right,’ said Mklaek, nodding. ‘Trace them up to the slab. Up. Do it really gently. You do not want to pull anything out by accident.’
‘All right,’ said Criid. She bit her lower lip in concentration.
‘Don’t follow the wires back to the firing cap,’ said Mklaek. ‘Go up.’
‘Yes, I understand what “up” means!’ Criid said.
‘Do any of you understand what “quickly” means?’ Banda gasped.
‘I’ve got the wire,’ said Criid. ‘I’ve got it at the top, where it meets the plate.’
‘Is it soldered?’ Mklaek asked.
‘No, it’s wound onto a metal terminal.’
‘All right. Good. So, without pulling it, unwind the wire and detach it.’
Staring at the deck, her arm in the hole, Criid grimaced. ‘That’s easier said than done. I can’t get hold of the end.’
‘When we’re done here,’ murmured Banda, ‘I’ve decided to kill everybody.’
‘If we don’t do this right,’ said Mklaek, ‘that won’t be necessary.’
‘I’ve got it,’ Criid said. ‘I’ve picked the strands loose. Wait. Wait…’
She looked at them.
‘It’s off,’ she said.
‘Are there any other wires?’ Mklaek asked.
‘Oh, what?’ cried Banda.
Criid gingerly felt around.
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, there’s– wait. No. No other wires.’
‘Then we lift it off,’ said Mklaek.
Criid drew her arm out. She and Mklaek got their fingers under the plate beside Banda.
‘On three,’ said Criid.
‘Three,’ said Banda.
They lifted.
As it came away, the deck plate exposed a dull grey anti-tank mine buried in soil beneath. A wire trailed from the pressure pin on the top.
They put the plate down on the path beside the hole.
‘I have to make it safe,’ said Mklaek, taking out a pair of pliers and kneeling beside the mine.
‘I do not want to do that again,’ said Criid.
Raess fired. The shot was perfect. The saline charge blew the firing cap assembly out of the device under the bridge span.
But the recoil also made the gantry shiver unpleasantly.
Preed lined the tagger up on the second trigger cap quickly. Raess scooped the waiting round up off the deck beside him and reloaded.
He reset his scope and locked on the point that Preed was tagging. His finger curled around the trigger, ready to squeeze.
Small flakes of rusty metal trickled down from overhead, disturbed by the recoil. Mktass caught one before it landed.
A second, no bigger than a rose petal, landed on the first span of the bridge.
‘Oh f–’ Mktass began.
The pressure switch clicked. The second charge, at the far end of the bridge, blew.
The force of the detonation instantly shredded the entire length of the bridge into rust particles and ignited the first charge. The combined blast lit the chamber like a supernova.
Mktass, Preed, Sairus, Brennan and Raess were simply atomised. Concussive pressure split the chamber walls and forced a titanic shockwave back down the access tunnel. The pressure blast liquidised Sergeant Gorlander and the troop element waiting in the passageway behind them.
The rushing, sucking fireball that squirted up the tunnel incinerated the pulped remains a millisecond later.
TWENTY-ONE
Salvation Lost
The convoy of Tauros vehicles had reached the inner hatch that led into the occupied section of the Reach. Blenner, Wilder and their team stood guard by the vehicles. Gaunt had sent troops back from the college to collect the carry crates and begin the extraction of sensitive materials.
Wilder was pacing.
‘Calm down,’ Blenner told him, but only because the pacing was making him feel more tense himself. They were exposed, literally right on the doorstep of the enemy holding. The smells of squalid decay and putrefaction coming out of the hatch were horrifying.
He looked at Felyx. The boy was standing by the tail board of his vehicle, watching the dark cavities around them for movement. He was holding his weapon too tightly.
Blenner tried to think of something encouraging to say, but he had used up all his banter on Perday on the ride in.
The bang made them jump. The ground shuddered. Pressure shock popped their ears so hard many of them cried out and dropped their guns.
A second later, they felt the rush of hot wind come at them down the tunnel, and smelled the grit and fyceline.
‘Damnation,’ said Blenner. ‘What just happened?’
Merrt was lining up to take a shot when the ground shook. They all felt it. Pieces of junk trickled down from the roof. The distant boom came a second later and then, like a feverish sigh, the rush of burned air.
The team members looked at each other.
‘Feth,’ said Vahgner.
‘Somebody just got unlucky,’ said Daur.
It was like a grenade going off behind them. A violent tremor ripped through the floor, and a shockwave of noise, heat and pressurised air slammed through the chamber into them. Criid, Banda and Leyr were all knocked over. Somehow Chiria kept her feet.
They all knew what it was. They knew instantly. One of the other clearance teams had set something off. It was close by, too. Who? Mktass’s bunch? Mkoll’s?
/> It was the noise, the blink of annihilation, that they had been dreading all day, the thing they had been braced for, the thing they had been yearning and willing not to happen.
It hadn’t happened to them. Someone else had got unlucky. It hadn’t happened to them.
But it might as well have done.
Mklaek had been in the process of removing the firing pin from the floor mine they had finally exposed. Keeping his hand as still as possible, he had been lifting the pin he had unscrewed clear of the socket, slowly and cleanly, making sure no extra wires were attached. Criid was rolling her sleeve back down and putting her gloves back on. Banda was trying to flex life into her fingers and arms from holding the deck plate.
He had been a millimetre or so away from lifting it clear when the blastwave hit them.
‘Mklaek?’ Criid cried, getting up.
Mklaek was prone on the deck, belly down, his face over the anti-tank mine. His hand was on the trigger pin, still holding it. The blast had made him touch it against the rim of the socket. He didn’t dare move. He didn’t dare break the contact.
‘Mklaek?’ Criid repeated. She and the others moved towards him.
‘Don’t come any closer,’ he hissed, trying not to move. ‘Don’t come any closer. Run. Get the detachment running.’
‘Feth that!’ said Banda.
‘I’m not kidding!’ Mklaek whispered, his eyes wide. ‘Run, you stupid bastards! Run now. I think this has gone live! I think it’s live and I can’t hold it forever. Run!’
‘No way–’ Criid began.
‘Run!’ Mklaek rasped, almost a wail of desperation.
They looked at each other.
‘We can’t–’ Criid began.
Leyr and Banda grabbed her and bundled her towards the passageway behind them. They started running, Chiria too, labouring with the weight of the flamer tank. The troop detachment saw them coming and needed no encouragement to turn and run as well. They fled down the tunnel, full sprint. Leyr and Banda had to virtually drag Criid.
Mklaek held on for as long as he could. When his fingers finally began to give out, he lifted the pin away from the socket.
Nothing.
‘The Emperor protects,’ he murmured, tears of relief in his eyes.
The tank mine exploded.
They felt the detonation rather than heard it. The copper flooring of the college hall shivered. The lamps rattled and stirred.
Gaunt turned to look at Mkoll, and as he did so they both felt the pressure shift of air passing through the chamber. Gaunt could taste the heat and the dry stink of explosives.
‘That was big,’ he said.
Mkoll didn’t reply. He knew they’d just lost someone. A lot of people, probably. Perhaps that had been the sound of them losing the fight, the mission, and everything they’d come for.
Bonin came in.
‘That came up the tunnels,’ he said. ‘One of the disposal teams made a misstep.’
‘Which one?’ asked Rawne.
Bonin shook his head.
‘If we felt it here–’ said Gaunt.
‘Sir?’
Gaunt turned. With Varl guarding him, Mabbon had gone over to one of the control panels wired into the wall of the college chamber. Behind a dingy glass panel, a strip of stained paper was scrolling through a chart recorder, six claw-like, spring-loaded arms leaving scratchy lines on the graph.
‘It’s a motion recorder,’ said Mabbon. ‘They’re commonplace. The magirs and etogaurs of the facility will have detected it.’
They felt another smaller but definite thump through the ground. The graphing arms recorded a sudden and steep spike.
‘Another one?’ said Gaunt.
‘Available time just reduced considerably,’ said Mabbon. ‘No matter what is happening on the main approach, your enemy will now be sending units to investigate.’
Gaunt strode back to Rawne and Mkoll.
‘Strengthen the perimeter,’ he said. ‘I want to know the moment they arrive.’
Members of the troop detachment were bringing in the first of the empty carry boxes.
‘Let’s get these filled. Quickly,’ said Gaunt. He glanced back at Mabbon.
‘Take everything you can,’ said Mabbon. ‘Papers, books, document cases, tubes, data-slates. Use gloves. Seal the boxes when they’re full.’
‘Don’t sort,’ said Gaunt. ‘In fact, don’t even look at what you’re grabbing. The Inquisition can worry about decoding and understanding it all. We’ve just got to deliver. Pick it up, ship it out, move on to the next box. Anything you’re not sure about, leave it or ask me.’
‘Come on,’ said Domor, clapping his hands. ‘Grab and go.’
Gaunt took an empty box, moved to some dirty metal shelves, and began to take the pamphlets and books off it. He could smell book mould and damp. Some of the page edges had stuck to the metal. He took each handful and packed it into the box, filling it neatly and efficiently, the way his father had taught him to pack a foot locker.
He never imagined he’d be handling this sort of material. It was his imagination, no doubt, but his flesh tingled despite the gloves. What were they disturbing? How were they being contaminated? This stuff had power. This knowledge, this learning, it had a potency of its own. The books, the bindings, the materials used, the very words, dictated through the warp by lisping, gleeful, inhuman voices. Under any other circumstances, they would have been burning the stuff.
He moved to another rack. Scroll cases. The tubes were made of the same nut-brown, glossy leather as the belts and straps of the Sons of Sek. He knew what it was. He kept packing anyway.
The box was full. He closed the lid, secured it with the straps, and turned to hand it off in exchange for a fresh one.
Felyx Chass was offering him the empty box.
‘What are you doing here?’ Gaunt asked, biting back his alarm and managing to keep his voice low.
‘Following orders, sir,’ said Felyx.
‘What orders?’
‘Conveyance transport duty, sir,’ the boy said. His face was pale.
‘Take this crate back to the transports. Load it securely. Come back for another one,’ said Gaunt.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Are you all right?’
Felyx nodded.
‘In duty we find true fulfilment, sir.’
‘That’s Ravenor,’ said Gaunt.
‘I took the liberty of reading some,’ said Felyx.
Gaunt handed the sealed crate over.
‘Get moving,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to go quickly.’
Felyx hurried towards the exit with the box. Gaunt picked up the empty carton he’d left behind.
‘You look troubled,’ said Mabbon. Gaunt turned. Mabbon had wandered over to him. Varl and the other Suicide Kings were busy packing boxes and watching the outer exits.
‘This is a precarious situation,’ said Gaunt. ‘We prepared for so long, and invested such effort, and now we’re here… I’m not sure it’s worth it. We’re stealing secrets that we don’t want to hear, and laying the blame on another.’
‘I see,’ said Mabbon. ‘I thought you might just be worried about your son.’
Gaunt narrowed his eyes.
‘You leave him alone.’
Mabbon raised his chained wrists.
‘I’m not in a position to do anything to anyone.’
‘How did you know?’
Mabbon’s face was impassive.
‘I hear things. I don’t get much opportunity to do anything except listen. I am not regarded as human, colonel-commissar. People talk around me as though I’m not there. They gossip to pass the time when they guard me. I could tell you all sorts of things about your Ghosts. I choose not to, because it would be impertinent and inappropriate, and I have no desire to damage the fragile relationship between us. On this occasion, I was merely expressing concern for you because I respect you.’
Gaunt was silent. Then he nodded and began packing the second box.
‘I worry that we’re tainting ourselves. Just handling this material, bringing it back to the Armaduke…’
‘That is simple paranoia, sir,’ said Mabbon. ‘Perfectly understandable. As I explained, the material in the college is inert. It is simply data. Oh, some of it is fairly unpleasant – records of abominations, atrocities – but it is not toxic of itself. It can be handled and removed quite safely.’
Gaunt began to put bundles of old data-slates into the box.
‘Would you like me to help?’ asked Mabbon.
‘I’d prefer it if you didn’t touch anything.’
Mabbon nodded.
‘There are,’ he said, ‘other areas, crypts and vaults not far from the colleges of heritence, but kept separate, where true evil lurks. They contain artefacts. Devices. Books that need to weighed down and chained, and which can only be read with surgically adapted eyes. Those are the things you need to avoid. Even the weaponwrights and the servants of the Heritor treat those with care. The warp is in them. But the Imperium is so afraid of the influence of the Ruinous Powers, it chooses to ignore vast amounts of data like this – data that is perfectly sound and reliable – and thus blinds itself to its enemy.’
‘I understand the brief,’ said Gaunt. ‘That’s why I supported the proposal. That’s why I volunteered my regiment. The removal and review of this material will give us insight into enemy operations that most likely will shift the course of the Crusade. If we cripple this facility, we also deprive the Archenemy of a vital resource.’
‘Even those two fine reasons are secondary to our goal,’ replied Mabbon.
‘Sir!’
Gaunt looked around. Sergeant Ewler had found something. Gaunt and Mabbon went over to him. Ewler and two other Ghosts, all of them with half-packed crates, were standing in the doorway of one of the college hall’s annexes, a small circular room lined with wooden shelves. There was a brass display case and analysis console in the centre of the floor.
‘These aren’t books, sir,’ said Ewler. ‘Do we take them too?’
Gaunt looked around the shelves. There were small objects everywhere, individually boxed in wooden frames, or stoppered in specimen flasks, like catalogued museum items: small ikons, pieces of technology, idols, figurines, amulets, strange items of jewellery, ritual athames, wands and beakers, playing cards, samples of powders and compounds, fragments of bone and fossil, pots of liquid. Gaunt saw a few old Imperial medals, a broken aquila, an Inquisitorial rosette, some pieces of augmetic and Imperial tech that he could not identify. He saw items that seemed unmistakably eldar in origin, and the blunt teeth and fetishes of greenskins.