Several Ghosts had taken aim at the approaching truck.
‘No!’ Bray ordered. A stray shot would set off an unstable load. A tread fether like the one Chiria was lugging would certainly stop the truck, but the result would be the same. It was already too close. A blast would take half of the Ghosts with it.
‘Fall back?’ asked Bray.
Kolosim shook his head. There was no time. No one would get clear. Not even at a run.
He dashed down the line to Nessa.
‘Driver!’ he said, signing. ‘Driver or engine block! Nothing else!’
She nodded, and set her long-las, resting it on its folding bipod across the top of the boulder she was crouched behind.
The cargo-6 thundered closer, kicking up dust. It was running fast, and wavering across the centre-line of the highway.
‘Nessa?’ Kolosim urged.
‘I have to wait,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘It has to be side-on, or the round will go clean through to the back compartment.’
‘Shit!’ Kolosim hissed.
The truck came up the final stretch. Ghosts in the line nearby had ducked flat. It took the corner hard, tyres squealing, tilting hard on its suspension. Throne, it was loaded heavy.
Past the corner it began to accelerate up the approach road. It was almost level with them.
Nessa looked serene. She seemed to have stopped breathing.
Her long-las boomed.
The hotshot round went through the boarded side window of the cab. It must have delivered a straight kill to the driver, because the truck veered hard. Nessa ejected the cell, slammed home another, and fired again. Her reload cycle had taken less than a second. She didn’t even appear to aim the second time. She fired, and the second hotshot punched through the truck’s engine cover. Something blew out under the hood and the truck decelerated hard. Its motor was clattering and stricken. The truck came to a slow halt as its sudden lack of motive power worked with the incline of the approach road. It started to coast, then swung sideways and rammed a fencepost.
Kolosim had closed his eyes. He opened them. The truck had not detonated. Its front end was caved around the post. It started rolling backwards slowly, carried by its own weight on the slope.
‘Feth!’ Kolosim said.
The truck rolled silently, motor dead, and bounced off the approach road on the other side, rear axle down in the gulley.
Again, it did not go off.
Kolosim was up and running. So were Caober and Chiria, heedless of the fact that they were exposed with insurgents in range on the far side of the highway.
Chiria reached the truck first, and clambered into the back.
‘Chiria?’ Kolosim yelled.
‘More D60 than I ever want to see in one place again,’ she called back. ‘Shit.’
‘What?’
‘It’s on a timer.’
‘How long?’
‘You don’t want to know. Run.’
Caober had opened the cab door. The driver, a Sek packson, was dead behind the wheel. Nessa’s shot had entirely vaporised his head.
Kolosim got up into the back. His jaw dropped. He’d never seen so many boxes of D60. Maybe a tonne and half, plus some open crates of thermite mines. Chiria was hunched over them.
‘It’s pretty rudimentary,’ she said. ‘Impact trigger running the timed fuse. Very rough. Surprised they didn’t die rigging it.’
‘How long?’
‘You still don’t want to know.’
‘Stop saying that!’ he exclaimed.
‘Just cup your balls and pray,’ she said. She was good with explosives. If anyone could do it, it was Chiria.
‘Uh oh,’ she said.
‘What!’
She turned to look at him. A big grin split her famously scarred face. ‘We’re still alive,’ she said.
She tossed him the detached timer and firing pack. He caught it badly.
‘Feth you,’ he said. ‘I nearly shat.’ He kissed her on the side of the head.
‘Get off,’ she said.
They heard pops and cracks. The insurgents had started up again. It wasn’t as heavy as before. They had little left to deliver.
But they were aiming for the truck. They wanted to finish the delivery of their gift.
Kolosim jumped down out of the cargo-6. Las-bolts and hard rounds were clipping the road and gulley around him. He heard one slice through the cargo-6’s canvas cover.
‘Light ’em up! Make ’em stop!’ he yelled into his bead.
The Ghosts began firing, trying to drive the remaining insurgents down and keep them so pinned they couldn’t fire.
But shots were still coming in.
‘Over here!’ Kolosim yelled. With Chiria and Caober, he was already straining to push the truck out of the gulley. The nearest fire teams ran over to join them. One was hit in the back of the leg as he ran forwards. Someone stopped to drag him back to cover, yelling for a corpsman. The others came to Kolosim’s side, tossing down their weapons and planting their hands against the truck’s bodywork. Kolosim had fifteen Ghosts heaving on the truck with him. They got it bumped out of the gulley and back onto the road. Caober leaned into the cab to correct the steering while he pushed. Backs breaking, they began to roll it up the long slope towards the Mechanicore. Shots pinged and cracked down around them.
All they had to do was get it out of range. Push it up the slope. Just a hundred metres would be enough.
A hundred metres. Under sustained fire. Pushing a five tonne truck carrying a tonne and a half of high explosive.
The air in the ship was stale and humid. It had clearly taken damage in the past week, and major environmental subsystems had been taken off-line for repair. The sirdar passed through areas where the main lighting was out and red-lensed lanterns had been hung from the spars to provide temporary illumination. Oil, grease and waste water dripped through the decks and pooled under the walkway grilles. Some sections were closed off entirely. The sirdar heard the whine of power tools and the sputtering pop of welding gear. Several other sections were stacked with structural debris and baskets of broken plasteks and ceramite. Gangs of servitors and haggard human slaves were working to clear the detritus from the companionways and compromised compartments. Packsons and gold-robed crewmen roamed past.
The hissing whisper was everywhere. It scratched at his ears, and tugged at his brain. It was far, far louder inside the ship.
At most junctions and compartment hatches, the sirdar passed easily, unchallenged by the packsons posted at each way point. At one, an overzealous guard called out after him as he passed. The sirdar kept walking with confidence, as though he hadn’t noticed the cry, and the guard didn’t follow it up.
At another junction, he was stopped by two etogaurs who berated him for over a minute about the noxious heat aboard ship and the lack of circulating air. The sirdar nodded, checked his slate, and promised he would look into it directly.
Access was alarmingly easy. All that was required was confidence, the ability to look like you belonged there, and a few words of the language to get you past. Enough purpose in your stride, and no one gave you a second look.
And the Archenemy had no reason to be alert. They were in the heart of the Fastness, a secure location unknown to Imperial intelligence. The only Imperial humans in a radius of ninety kilometres were in chains.
The brig lay on the eighth service deck aft. Most prisoners were held ashore, especially those who had signalled they were ready to convert and accept impressment. Only the most significant and sensitive were chambered aboard the ship.
Like enkil vahakan.
The sirdar loitered in the shadows of a through-deck ladder well for a few minutes, and observed the operation of the brig access. There was an outer and inner cage, large and heavy sliding metal frames, and between them was a security post manned by two large packson watchmen. There was a small operations console built into the wall, a vox-link and security board, and a belt-fed Urdeshi-made .20 on a tripod, mounted to cover the inner bay of the brig block through the second cage.