‘I let you keep your mouth, didn’t I?’ Rawne spat.
Trooper Kaellin uttered a grunt as a well-placed las-round found his forehead and threw him back from the window slot. He was dead before he hit the floor.
Rawne cursed. The Archenemy were incredibly effective, and his team were penned in a target building that was being demolished around them one las-bolt at a time. The Suicide Kings, his fine first section, had been reduced to eight: him, Oysten, Varl, Bellevyl, Brostin, Cardass, Laydly and LaHurf.
End of an era. End of the infamous Kings. He was damned if this was how he was going to go out.
Then again, he reflected, I’m probably long since damned anyway.
‘I told Sergeant Varl this, and I’ll tell you too, colonel,’ said Mabbon. ‘It’s me they want. They don’t care about you, except to kill you on their way to me. Let them have me and spare–’
‘No.’
‘Rawne–’
‘No, Mabbon,’ said Rawne. ‘I’ve got orders. A duty. And duty only has two endings. Accomplishing it or–’
‘I know the other one,’ said Mabbon.
Rawne got in beside Laydly, who was burning through his ammo at another of the window slots.
‘Cardass says four,’ said Rawne.
‘That’s what I count, sir,’ said Laydly. ‘One on the roof of that bunker there. Two in the blockhouse beside it, the other one up by the gate–’
A burst of las bracketed the slot. Laydly stopped pointing, and he and Rawne ducked. Rockcrete chippings and metal fragments rained down on them.
‘You’ll have to take my word on the last one,’ Laydly said.
‘What did that bunker look like to you?’ Rawne asked.
Laydly shrugged. ‘A silo, maybe?’
‘That’s what I thought,’ he replied. Xenos was a prison, not a fortress. It wasn’t designed to keep attackers out, it was designed to keep people in. Vital elements, like the guardhouse and any garrison areas or arsenals would be securely distanced from the cell block compound.
‘Bellevyl!’ Rawne called out.
Trooper Bellevyl was holding another window slot several metres left of Rawne.
‘Sir?’ the Belladon called back.
‘Think you can lob one onto that bunker?’
Bellevyl pulled a face, assessing his very limited angle of fire.
‘Dunno, sir,’ he said.
‘Let me re-phrase,’ said Rawne. ‘Lob one onto the bunker, Bellevyl.’
Bellevyl nodded. First section, B Company – the Suicide Kings – were Rawne’s personal squad. Every Ghost in it had been hand-picked by him. In the early days, they’d all been Tanith, because Rawne had nursed an antipathy to any new influx from Verghast or Belladon. But he had mellowed. Skill-sets and raw talent mattered more to him than some notion of loyalty to a world that no longer existed. That, and the fact that so many of the original Tanith in first section had been smoked over the years he’d needed replacements.
Like the First’s scout cadre, B Company first section followed its own rules. It was part of the privilege of membership. Rawne allowed greater discretion in weapon choice. He liked the idiosyncratic adaptability of variety. The Suicide Kings went to work packing a range of firepower normally found in elite storm troop platoons. Okel, Throne rest him, had carried a large calibre autogun that chambered armour-piercing rounds. Conglan, now dead out on the yard somewhere, had favoured a hellgun. Oysten, along with her vox-caster, lugged a stock-less riot gun and a bag of breaching shells. Cardass carried a box-fed .20 stubber with a pump shotgun cut-down bolted under the primary barrel.
LaHurf and Bellevyl had standard pattern lasrifles like Varl’s, but both had increased the carry-weight by a third through the addition of under-barrel grenade launchers.
Bellevyl slotted in a chunky krak grenade and lined up at the slot, scooting around for the best angle. Heavy enemy fire kept licking at his position, making him duck.
‘Take your time,’ Varl said. ‘No fething rush.’
The ceiling collapsed.
A Qimurah dropped down onto them in a shower of flakboard and masonry debris. He landed on LaHurf, breaking both of the man’s legs. LaHurf was still screaming when the Qimurah struck him with a fist-full of talons. The blow lifted LaHurf off the ground, spinning him in mid-air, blood jetting in all directions from his torn throat. He landed hard.
The Qimurah reached for LaHurf’s weapon.
Ignoring the tight confines, Cardass opened up across the room with his .20. The deafening hard-round burst tore chunks out of the Qimurah’s chest and shoulder, and threw him against the guardhouse wall. Despite severe wounds that would have killed a standard human instantly, the Qimurah lurched forward again with a roar, neon blood pouring from his injuries, and opened fire with LaHurf’s weapon. Bellevyl was killed at his window slot. Oysten was winged. Cardass was hit in the left hip, and overbalanced.
Brostin hit the Qimurah in the side of the head. He was using one of his flamer tanks as a club. Two blows knocked the creature down, and Brostin kept beating, slamming the heavy metal cylinder into its skull over and over again.
‘There,’ he said, finally tossing the tank aside. It was slick with neon blood. The Qimurah had nothing left above the neck except a spatter of yellow paste and bone shards. ‘Knew there’d be more than one way to kill these bastards with a flamer.’
Oysten was already up, blood oozing from her shoulder. She and Rawne ran to Cardass.
‘I’m all right,’ Cardass said. He wasn’t. His hip was a ragged mess. Oysten reached for field dressings, but Cardass told her where she could stick them. He heaved himself back to his window slot and started to fire his stubber again.
Varl had dashed across to Bellevyl’s position.
‘Sorry,’ he said to Bellevyl’s corpse. Varl felt bad about it. No man deserved to be mocked the instant before his death. Varl set down his own rifle, and hoisted Bellevyl’s. He checked the grenade was still set in the tube launcher.
‘Call it! Bunker?’ he asked, peering out of the slot.
‘Would you?’ Rawne shouted back. Prolonged bursts of fire were striking the guardhouse facade.
Varl angled the gun and fired the underbarrel. It launched the grenade with a sound like an ogryn hawking into a tin spitoon. The grenade sailed up and out, described an arc across the contested yard, and landed on the bunker roof.
It exploded with a fierce sheet of flame that was entirely consumed a second later by the detonation of the bunker itself.
Rawne had been right. Camp Xenos kept its munition store away from the main buildings.
The blast was considerable. It battered the gate area, swallowed their transport in a shock of expanding flame, and blew out the blockhouse beside the bunker. A cone of fire lifted off the bunker site, blooming out into the night sky like a mushroom cap. Debris rained down. They could hear secondary pops and bangs as stored munitions and power cells caught and cooked.
Something landed in the yard along with the debris from the blockhouse. The Qimurah, one of the shooters using the blockhouse as cover, had been cut in two. He was scorched and dripping yellow fluid. His head lolled, and he began to drag his upper half across the yard towards the guardhouse with his spasming hands.
‘Kill it!’ Rawne told Cardass.
‘He’s been cut in half–’
‘Does he look dead?’ Rawne asked. ‘He doesn’t look dead to me.’
Cardass angled his .20 down and raked the clawing mass with stubber fire until it stopped moving.
‘Move!’ Rawne yelled. ‘We’re out now!’ The blast had killed one for certain. Maybe more. Whatever their losses, the Qimurah squad had been blinded and rocked. They had a moment of opportunity.