Mkoll and the others watched for a moment from the shadow of the rail. The enemy warship still had fight in it.
Mazho looked at Mkoll with one eyebrow raised. Mkoll shook his head. Due to their sheer size and power, shiftship munitions were remarkably stable and inert until selected for use. They could waste hours trying to force a shell to detonate, and even then there was no guarantee of a cascade in the magazines.
And they didn’t have hours.
On deck five, they waited as an excubitor strode past with two lekt psykers hobbling in his wake, then almost ran into a damogaur and squad of six packsons. Mkoll didn’t even have time to signal, but he knew Holofurnace must have slipped out of sight behind him because the damogaur started to question Mkoll and his two packsons about the location of an etogaur called Karane.
‘I haven’t seen him, damogaur,’ Mkoll replied. ‘Perhaps he is on the bridge with He whose voice commands the stars.’
The damogaur looked at him, annoyed.
‘The Holy Magister’s not on the bridge, you shit-stain,’ he snapped. ‘When was the Holy Magister last on the bridge?’
‘Apologies, damogaur, of course not,’ said Mkoll quickly. ‘I misspoke. I meant–’
‘No, I’ve tried there too,’ the damogaur replied. ‘The Oratory is closed to all at the moment. Karane must be ashore, then.’
He cursed.
‘What’s your name, sirdar?’ he asked.
‘Eloth, my magir.’
‘If you see Magir Karane, Sirdar Eloth, tell him the shipmaster needs those manifest orders by dawn. Dawn, you understand?’
‘Yes, my magir.’
The damogaur snapped his fingers, and his pack followed him away down the hall.
‘What was that?’ whispered Mazho.
‘Our objective’s no longer the bridge,’ Mkoll replied.
‘So where?’ asked Milo.
‘The Oratory.’
‘And where’s that?’ asked Mazho.
‘I have no fething idea,’ replied Mkoll.
They reached deck three, and almost immediately entered a large section that was undergoing heavy repairs. Work crews of industrial servitors were fitting new armour lining along a section of hull panel that ran for about sixty metres. Welding arrays sparked furiously. Slave gangs were wheeling out tubs laden with fused scrap metal and lumps of slag that had been stripped out from the failed lining.
Mkoll got his little squad in temporary cover, and then walked on through the repair zone alone. He spotted an open compartment where two provision officers in filthy golden robes were arguing about puncture sealant. The compartment was being used as a supervision post for the work. It was stacked with tools and rebreather sets. There was a small work table covered in junk and requisition dockets.
He strolled up to the provision officers, and as he did so, realised they weren’t packsons of the Sekkite host. They were V’heduak, companions of a different tribal order that served as the equivalent of Navy personnel for the Archonate Fleet. They were tall men, larger than Mkoll had realised when he first approached, their big-boned mass and heavy muscle speaking of many family generations serving in high gravity shift operations. He had encountered the V’heduak’s brutal tech-cannibal shock troops before, but not the ruling class. Their heads were shaved except for long, square beards, and they had dented blast visors lowered to their chests. Their faces were fetishistically covered in piercings, so many in the ears that the flesh was stretched. Their scalps were covered in complex tattoo work. Starmaps, Mkoll guessed. The realms and worlds they had made shift between.
They turned to look at him with augmetic eyes.
‘What do you want, soldier?’ one spat using a formal construction that emphasised disdain.
‘That his voice may never fade, I apologise, my magirs,’ he replied, throwing the Sekkite salute.
They returned it, grudgingly, glaring down at him.
‘My magirs, Etogaur Karane extends his respects,’ said Mkoll, trying to use the awkward construction of formal deference. He began to sweat. This had been a bad idea. His command of the Sekkite tongue was nothing like fluent enough to handle a strange accent and odd word-orders of the V’heduak sub-dialect. ‘Etogaur Karane wishes to express his concerns that the strenuous work here may disturb the Oratory.’
‘How?’ asked one.
‘We would not risk disturbing the Magir-Who-Speaks!’ the other exclaimed.
‘I merely express the concern, my magirs,’ Mkoll said. ‘The noise and commotion–’
One of the V’heduak sneered at him.
‘The Oratory is two decks hence, soldier,’ he said. ‘It would not be possible for us to interrupt the solace of the Magir-Who-Speaks.’
Two decks in which direction, Mkoll wondered.
‘Begone,’ said one of the V’heduak. ‘And tell your etogaur he is a weeping sore.’
‘I will at once, my magirs,’ said Mkoll, backing away.
He retraced his steps through the work area. The V’heduak had given him little, but the risk had been worth it. He had spotted something over their shoulders while they had been insulting him.
He passed a row of spoil bins that were packed with scrap plate and insulation materials. Without breaking stride, he dropped one of the grenades from the sirdar’s weapon’s belt into it. Red dot. He hoped that meant smoke.
It did.
In seconds, thick red signal smoke was pouring out of the spoil bin.
He hurried back to the V’heduak.
‘What now, you ulcer?’ one roared.
‘My magirs!’ Mkoll said, pointing. ‘A fire! In the waste tubs! Something has caught alight!’
Snorting with anger and surprise, the V’heduak pushed past him. Smoke was now clogging the back of the work space. He heard them shout for extinguishers, and begin to reprimand the servitors for using their fusing torches too close to scrap insulate.
With their backs turned, Mkoll stepped into the supervision post, snatched up the folded sheet of schematics he had seen lying on the table, and vanished entirely into the shadows.
‘What did you get?’ asked Milo.
Mkoll took out the thick fold of paper, and they opened it out.
‘Deck plans,’ he said. They were hand-drawn, a top plan and side elevation, and the work had been done with great skill. The ghostly traceries of the penmanship even revealed the intricate lines of principal power relays and coolant systems.
‘They were using it to supervise the repair work,’ he said.
‘No cogitators? No data-slates?’ Mazho asked.
‘They don’t trust digital records,’ Mkoll replied.
‘I think we can put it to better use,’ said Milo, and began to study it carefully.
‘I have a question first,’ said Mkoll. ‘Where the feth is Holofurnace?’
The hot, dark confines of the duct opened out into a long rockcrete gallery. It was a hundred and sixty metres long and thirty wide, an artificial ravine lit by the lambent glow of thick biolume algae. Steeply sloped rockcrete walls splayed out from the central channel, to form high and narrow overlook ledges that could be used as inspection walkways. By the phosphorescent light, Obel noted the large and heat-eroded stencil HALL 7816 on one of the rockcrete revetments. The channel bed running between the high, sloped banks was a mess of fused magmatic spoil through which ran a trickle of foul, liquefied waste. The air stank.
‘This is a better site for an ambush,’ Zhukova remarked.
Obel nodded. Meeting the Archenemy in the geotherm duct would have been a slaughter. The duct was only wide enough for two people, side by side. They needed room to deploy so they could bring more of their force to bear against a physically superior enemy.