It made them all step back.
‘Shit,’ said Ifvan. ‘That’s gonna kill us.’
‘We’ll be fine,’ said Criid.
‘Do we need masks?’ asked Lubba. ‘You know, rebreathers and stuff?’
Criid looked around. There were plenty of equipment racks in the hall’s workspace, but no masks or rebreather hoods. The adepts of the Cult had no need of such things.
‘We’ll be fine,’ she repeated. She peered into the duct, and shone her stablight. It was a circular metal tube three metres in diameter, the interior black with soot and mineral deposits. Every three metres, it was banded with a big iron reinforcement ring. The duct stretched as far as her beam could reach.
‘Let’s go!’ she called out.
Obel was gathering his kit, still trying his bead.
‘Obel to Pasha. Do you copy? Obel to Pasha.’
In the laboratory space, Konjic passed the vox-mic to Pasha.
Pasha took it.
‘Lunny? Is Pasha. Sorry, vox is being scrambled by whatever crazy has happened to our Mechanicus hosts. Konjic had to run re-routes, clever boy.’
‘We’re going in, major,’ Obel replied on speaker. ‘Not ideal circumstances–’
‘You do your best, Lunny Obel. Make Belladon proud.’
‘I’m from Tanith, ma’am.’
‘And where is that, these days, eh? Belladon will give you land and honour when you come home a hero. An adopted son. Do what you can. In five minutes, I start sending teams down from this end.’
‘We’ve locked ourselves in here, major,’ said Obel, his voice crackling with static. ‘What’s the situation?’
‘Is bad, sad to tell,’ she replied. She looked over at the door that led from the lab into the arcade. Spetnin had a squad there and two more outside, fending off anything that came close. She could hear the constant chatter of las-fire. ‘The Mechanicus makes deadly toys. Gun-servitors. Kill machines. Very bad. Also, the priests have gone insane. We are killing many, and so are they.’
‘We’ll be as quick as we can,’ replied Obel. ‘Can you contact the palace for reinforcement?’
Pasha grimaced. ‘I will try, Lunny. Now off you go. The Emperor protects.’
‘Obel out.’
Pasha handed the mic back to her adjutant.
‘Didn’t have the heart to tell him,’ she said. Konjic had been trying the Urdeshic Palace and high command channels for several minutes. They were all dead. It wasn’t just scrambling or interference. The caster display read all those sites as non-functional. She dreaded to think what might have happened.
She took a deep breath. All she could do was focus on the job at hand, the job the Lord Executor had given her.
Spetnin hurried over. He was bleeding from a scalp wound.
‘Well?’ she asked.
‘Almost an over-run,’ he replied. ‘All our companies inside the complex have been driven into pockets by the frenzy. The Mechanicus has run amok. But they’re making easy targets. It just takes a lot to kill them. Our casualty rate stands at about thirty per cent.’
‘Throne,’ she rumbled. That was hundreds of men.
‘Our big problem is going to be ammunition,’ Spetnin said. ‘We’re burning through it, and we can’t get out to resupply. Are we getting reinforcement?’
She shook her head.
‘Not from the palace,’ she said. ‘But we have four companies outside.’
‘Who are in a fight themselves,’ Spetnin reminded her.
‘They may be better off than us,’ she said. ‘They were ready for theirs. Konjic, please to see if you can raise Kolosim.’
On the scree around the approach road, the Ghosts were lighting up the night. Their position was holding, and they were answering everything the insurgents handed them with interest. Already, the fire rate from the Archenemy, invisible in the waste-ground on the far side of the highway bank, had begun to drop off. Kolosim reckoned that in another ten minutes the hostiles would run out of munitions, or the will to continue, or the Ghosts would have simply killed enough of them to break them.
He cracked off some shots himself, using a rockcrete post as cover, his cape drawn in around him to mask him in the night. Ripples of bolts were criss-crossing the highway, and the Ghost’s extended line was dancing with discharge flashes and the big fire blurts of the heavy support weapons.
His link crackled.
‘Kolosim, go,’ he said.
‘Pasha. It is shit-show in here. We’re going to need some help.’
‘Happy to oblige as soon as this breaks, major,’ he replied.
‘Make it fast, captain. We are running dry of ammunition. If you can get in here, bring plenty. And consider anything and anyone you meet who isn’t a Ghost a hostile. The Mechanicus has turned.’
‘They’ve turned?’
‘Bah. Long story. Just get in. But bring ammo, and bring things that kill hard. Tread fethers. Grenades. Crew-served units. All targets have a high stopping factor.’
‘Stay alive,’ he responded. ‘I’ll advise you as soon as we’re moving. Kolosim out.’
Kolosim ducked down and crawled through the rubble to Bray’s position.
‘Here’s a twist,’ he said. ‘We’re going in.’
‘Into the Mechanicore?’ Bray asked.
Kolosim nodded and quickly related what Pasha had said. ‘I want you to get at least a company strength ready to fall back as soon as this dies down enough.’
Bray nodded. He looked back up the approach road at the dark, grim bulk of the Mechanicus fortress, a grey monolith in the night.
‘Ironic,’ he said. ‘We thought our job was going to be defending that place. Not invading it.’
‘You know what ironic gets you?’ Kolosim asked.
‘No, sir.’
‘Fething nothing. Not a thing. This situation is ongoing and developing. I don’t much fancy assaulting a fortified location like that head on, but I’m not leaving Pasha and the rest to die in there. That’s over two thirds of the Ghosts.’
‘If we can get the main gate open, we might be able to use the transports to move munitions inside in bulk. Faster than carry-teams.’
‘All right,’ said Kolosim. ‘Clock’s ticking.’
The fire rate coming in at them suddenly dropped away to almost nothing. Just a few lone shooters continued to pink away.
‘The feth?’ said Bray.
Kolosim pulled his bead close. ‘Ghost formations, cease fire. Cease fire.’
Firing from the Tanith lines died back. An almost eerie silence settled over the nightscape, broken only by a few cracks and pops from persistent shooters and the distant grumble of heat lightning. A haze of smoke drifted.
‘I don’t like that,’ said Bray.
Kolosim didn’t either. He’d expected the attack to die away eventually, because the insurgents moved in small, mobile, ill-supported units and their ammunition was limited. But they hadn’t all run out all at once. This fire-halt was coordinated.
They waited. After an anxious minute or two, they heard the engine.
A cargo-6 was coming down the highway from the east, lights hooded. It was moving at a fair pace. Kolosim couldn’t see it clearly, but it looked like its cab windows had been plated with flakboard.
‘Crap!’ he said. ‘Oh crap!’
He knew what it was. The Sekkite insurgence had driven bombs into several targets during the long months of the Urdesh campaign. They were rolling something in now. The foot attack had been to keep the Ghosts in position. Now the kill thrust was coming.
A cargo-6 could carry about ten tonnes. If it was fully laden, and that load was thermite or D60, both of which the insurgents used, then it would level a couple of square kilometres around the approach road.