They left the cell and headed down the dank blockway, Varl in the lead with his weapon ready. Tatters of gunfire continued to echo.
‘I don’t even know where we are,’ said Mabbon.
‘Camp Xenos,’ said Varl. ‘Used to be a civilian jail, but it got turned Prefectus pen during the occupation.’
‘Where is that?’ asked Mabbon.
Varl glanced back at him with a frown.
‘Plade Parish,’ he said. ‘East Central Eltath.’
Mabbon nodded. ‘They brought me in blindfold,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what Eltath looks like. Is it a pleasant city?’
‘Not right now,’ said Varl.
Mabbon looked down at his hands. He flexed his fingers. ‘I have only known the inside of cells for a long time. I have not been without manacles or leg irons for years–’
‘Just keep it down and keep it tight,’ Varl hissed. They passed through a rolling cage divider into another gloomy bay. Two corpses lay on the stone floor surrounded by puddles of blood that looked as shiny and black as tar in the low light. Their poses were clumsy, as though they had been frozen in the middle of restless sleep. One of them was Garic, the leader of the execution watch.
‘Grab a weapon,’ said Varl. Mabbon didn’t.
The prison was old, just a series of rockcrete blockhouses. Most of the paint-scabbed cell doors were open, and Mabbon saw weeds growing between the floor slabs.
‘Are there other prisoners?’ Mabbon asked.
‘No,’ said Varl. ‘They cleared the place to make it all special for you.’
‘Me and six guards?’
‘No, a garrison of thirty plus a six-man prisoner detail.’
They approached an open yard twenty metres wide. The area was roofed in with chain mesh. Above the high wall, Mabbon could dimly see the stacks of a vapour mill blowing slow, silent columns of pale steam up into the night air.
Varl made Mabbon wait before stepping out into the yard. Rawne appeared at a doorway on the far side.
He gestured, Tanith hand-code.
‘Got him, colonel,’ Varl said, signing back.
‘Colonel?’ asked Mabbon.
‘Yeah, there’s a lot of shit been going on,’ said Varl.
On the far side of the yard, Rawne edged a little way out of the doorway, lasrifle ready, peering up at the rooftops that overlooked the chain mesh layer. Trooper Nomis got in beside him, forming a V cover. They drew no immediate fire.
Apparently satisfied, Rawne signalled to Varl.
‘With me, double time, now,’ Varl told Mabbon.
They started out across the yard. Within seconds, las-bolts slammed down around them, steep plunging fire from above and behind. The shots dug scorch-holes in the yard’s rough ground, and left glowing, broken holes in the mesh above.
Rawne and Nomis both opened up, squirting shots up at the roof, and pinging more molten holes through the mesh. Varl got his arm around Mabbon and bundled him towards the door they had just left by.
Something landed hard on the mesh, making it jingle and undulate like a trampoline. The Qimurah had jumped from above. He turned, balanced in a low, splayed crouch on the wobbling mesh, and fired rapid, angled shots at the retreating Varl and Mabbon.
Rawne and Nomis hailed fire at the exposed figure. Hit multiple times, the Qimurah tumbled forwards, rolling and bouncing on the metal net. It was tearing in places where his weight combined with the heat-tear damage of gunfire. He wasn’t dead. He was trying to regain his balance to shoot again.
Rawne and Nomis stepped out into the open, training their fire at him. Spurts of neon fluid spattered down through the mesh.
Brostin stomped out of the doorway behind Rawne. He was hefting up his flamer’s nozzle.
‘Feth him up!’ Rawne yelled. ‘We’ll be all day killing the fether at this rate!’
Brostin’s flamer belched, and hosed a broad, yellow cone of flame up at the netting. The Qimurah was engulfed. They saw him thrash and twist, fire encasing him.
The damaged security mesh tore with a series of sharp metal whip-cracks. Part of it flopped down, spilling the burning Qimurah down onto the yard.
‘All right,’ said Varl, dragging Mabbon back out of the doorway where they had almost fallen. ‘Brostin’s cooked his–’
‘No!’ Mabbon warned.
The Qimurah got up again, flames still licking and swirling off his body. His clothes had burned off entirely. His flesh, from head to toe, was a bubbling mass of yellow ooze, blistering and dripping.
He raised his lasrifle. His hands and the rifle were swathed in fire. He got off three shots. One hit Brostin, fusing and snapping the buckle of his tank pack and knocking him backwards. The other two hit Nomis in the face and throat and killed him outright. Then the intense heat made the Qimurah’s rifle jam.
The Qimurah tossed it aside like a burning stick and began to limp towards Varl and Mabbon.
‘Shitty shit shit!’ Varl gasped, and started firing. Brostin was trying to wrestle with his now un-anchored tanks so he could let rip again.
‘Trooper Brostin! Tight squirt! Tight squirt!’ yelled Mabbon over Varl’s head. ‘Pull your flames tight!’
Brostin frowned, but obediently screwed the nozzle choke as tight as it would go. Varl had no idea how Brostin wasn’t burning his hands on the metal of the flamer spout. Rawne had run forwards to help brace the heavy tanks swinging off Brostin’s shoulder.
Brostin hosed again. His flamer made a much wilder, higher shriek. He shot a narrow, focused spear of nearly white-hot flame that struck the advancing Qimurah in the back.
The Qimurah staggered, seared from behind by the intense surge. He re-combusted in a rush of furious light, the flesh on his back rippling away in blackened flakes like paint stripping under the tongue of a blow torch. He became a column of fire in which they could see his ribcage and long bones in silhouette as meat and muscle transmuted into billowing clouds of ash and droplets of burning fat.
He collapsed, his remains making a heap like a pile of burning sticks. His skull, black as anthracite and steaming, rolled clear.
Varl pulled Mabbon out of the doorway. Brostin put the tanks down, panting. Rawne crossed to Nomis to check for a pulse, but one look at the man’s wounds told him it was futile.
‘Nice trick,’ said Brostin to Mabbon.
‘Qimurah secrete mucus through their skin,’ said Mabbon. ‘It makes them highly resistant to energy fire and to strong levels of heat. Blanketing them in flame is ineffective, but even they can’t withstand a sustained, focused blast at the very highest temperature.’
‘Good to know,’ said Brostin, trying to cobble a make-do repair on his tank-straps. ‘Because they’re awful fethers.’
‘What did you call them?’ asked Rawne.
‘Qimurah,’ said Mabbon. ‘The Anarch’s chosen ones. Elite and very rare. Hello, colonel. I gather it’s colonel, now. On your way to making etogaur at this rate.’
Rawne looked at him.
‘Not really the time or place for a catch up,’ he said. ‘Varl, get him under cover. There could be more of the fethers up there.’
Varl led Mabbon by the arm towards the door Rawne had emerged from.
‘How many are they, colonel?’ Mabbon asked over his shoulder.
‘We’ve seen six,’ said Rawne.
‘And killed two,’ said Varl.
‘I am flattered they sent more than one,’ said Mabbon. ‘Colonel, there will be eight of them. They either come alone, or in squads of eight.’
‘Eight? You sure?’
‘Please, colonel,’ said Mabbon. ‘It’s the holy number. Only sixty-four Qimurah ever exist at one time. Eight times eight, you see? There will be eight. How many men are with you?’
‘One section,’ said Rawne.
‘One?’
‘Just the Suicide Kings. B Company, first section.’