With his free hand, Gaunt began to unbuckle the shackle cuff pinning Prisoner B’s left arm to the chair. Prisoner B looked around at him, startled.
‘What?’ asked Gaunt.
‘I thought–’
‘What?’
‘I thought you were going to execute me.’
‘I will. Give me the slightest excuse, and I will,’ Gaunt said, working at the next set of buckles. He kept glancing over his shoulder at the door.
‘I will give you no reason to–’
‘You wanted us to trust you,’ Gaunt snapped. ‘You wanted me to trust you. I don’t and I probably won’t. But you wanted my help to stay alive because you swore you could help us. One chance. Do not test me.’
‘I will not, Gaunt.’
‘Don’t use my name either.’
‘Of course,’ said Prisoner B.
Gaunt unclasped the body straps and shook them off the etogaur’s shoulders.
‘Are your hands numb? Your fingers?’
‘No,’ said Prisoner B.
‘Then get the buckles on the leg straps undone,’ said Gaunt.
Prisoner B leaned over in the restraint chair and diligently began to undo the heavy iron buckles on the leather straps binding his legs. Gaunt crossed back to the heavy tank door and peered around it. The hallway outside was empty, but he heard a loud burst of full auto-fire, close by. Somewhere else, someone was screaming.
He could smell smoke, and he could hear some kind of… keening sound.
He ducked back into the tank cell, and looked over at Prisoner B. The prisoner had managed to free one leg.
‘Hurry up!’ Gaunt yelled.
There was a noise outside. He went back to the door. Looking around its rim, he was in time to see a detention officer and a sanctioned torturer fly in through the door at the far end of the interrogation unit. The detention officer was backing up, frantically blasting a lasrifle from the hip at unseen targets beyond the door. The torturer was simply running for his life, hurtling along the white-tiled hallway towards the heavy door half-concealing Gaunt.
Answering fire hammered in through the doorway, and cut down the detention officer, who simply crumpled and collapsed. Two or three more stray shots whined in, and then an armed man burst through the door, bounding over the dead detention officer. He was armed with an old lasrifle and dressed in shabby combat gear. A man dressed just like him appeared on his heels.
Both were wearing black-iron grotesks.
The first of them raised his rifle and pinked off a shot that hit the fleeing torturer in the spine, bringing him down hard. Belly down in a pool of blood that looked glossy, like spilled enamel paint against the polished white of the corridor’s tiling, the torturer tried to drag himself forward. His legs were useless.
He saw Gaunt behind the heavy, open cell door ahead of him.
‘Help me!’ he gurgled.
A las-round took the top of his head off.
Gaunt swung out from behind the door and fired his bolt pistol. The shot hit the first of the Pacted raiders square in the sternum, and exploded his torso. Blood and meat suddenly decorated a considerable section of the corridor’s white-tiled surfaces.
The other Pacter yelled something and began firing.
Gaunt ducked back behind the tank cell door as the auto fire ripped past. He felt it spank hard against the other side of the hefty door, driving it back against his body. He tried to keep it wedged open. If it slammed shut, the lock might engage, and if the lock engaged, he and Prisoner B would be trapped, and that would be the endgame.
More wild shots whacked against the door shielding him. The impacts were beginning to drive the door into him with enough force to bruise his shoulder and arm. Gaunt could hear shouting from the far end of the hall. Someone was shouting words in a hard, ugly language that he, thankfully, hadn’t heard much since Gereon.
With a curse, Gaunt kicked the door wide open and opened fire again, his bolt pistol braced in a two-handed grip. Three wailing bolt-rounds seared down the hallway, and detonated against the tiled walls, blowing clouds of tile fragments and plaster in all directions. The masked raiders, and there were three of them in sight, ducked frantically, and pulled back into the cover of the end door.
Gaunt fired another two shots with his great cannon of a pistol to keep them ducking, and turned back into the tank cell.
Prisoner B was standing right behind him.
Gaunt leapt back and brought his gun up, but Prisoner B just stood there.
‘Don’t sneak up on me!’ he ordered.
‘I didn’t mean–’ the etogaur said.
A flock of las-rounds cracked past. Gaunt winced and turned back, firing two more bolts that scattered the raiders sniping at them from the far hatchway.
‘Move!’ Gaunt yelled. He took off down the corridor with Prisoner B behind him. He could hear the raiders behind them shouting. What was that word?
Pheguth.
‘Come on!’ Gaunt yelled. Two las-bolts clipped the wall beside him, chipping the tiles.
Four metres more. A hatch on the left.
Gaunt skidded up in front of it, grabbed Prisoner B by the shoulder, and physically shoved him through the doorway out of the line of fire. He turned to fire one more hefty round at the raiders advancing along the corridor towards them, and then dived through the hatchway before he’d had time to see if he’d hit anything.
On the other side of the hatch, in the small access way adjacent to the main corridor of the interrogation unit, Prisoner B had come to a halt.
The Blood Pact soldier facing him had hesitated in surprise for a second. Now, his rifle was coming up to fire.
Gaunt fired past the etogaur’s shoulder and blew the raider’s head apart. Gore spattered across Prisoner B’s face. He didn’t flinch. He wiped it away with the back of his hand.
Gaunt slammed the hatch behind them shut, and wound the locking ring.
‘Move,’ he said to Prisoner B.
‘Which way?’
‘This way,’ said Gaunt.
‘Where are we going?’
‘I’ll find a way out,’ said Gaunt.
The raiders started beating on the other side of the locked hatch. Gaunt ejected his smoking bolt pistol’s clip. It was spent. Ten rounds. He was only carrying three spares in the pouches of his uniform belt.
‘They won’t let you go,’ said Prisoner B.
‘Pheguth,’ Gaunt replied.
‘What?’
‘They called you pheguth.’
‘What other word would they have for me?’ asked Prisoner B.
‘It’s what you people called Sturm,’ said Gaunt slamming a fresh load home and racking the mechanism.
‘What other word would they have for either of us?’ Prisoner B asked.
Gaunt shrugged.
‘This way,’ he said. Above the sound of the sirens, and the clamour of hammering and shouting from the other side of the hatch, he could still make out the curious keening noise. He looked back at Prisoner B.
The etogaur was looking down at the blood-soaked corpse of the raider at his feet. Specifically, he was staring at the fallen rifle.
Without any attempt at misdirection, he bent down to pick it up.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Gaunt.
‘What?’ asked the etogaur, his pink, scarless hand about to close on the rifle’s grip.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Getting a weapon. Two weapons are better than one.’
‘Forget it,’ said Gaunt.
‘We have to fight our way out.’
‘I said forget it.’
‘But–’ Prisoner B began.
‘I’m not arming you. You can forget it. I am not arming you,’ said Gaunt.
The etogaur straightened up. He nodded.
‘I understand,’ he said.
They set off down the access way. There were sounds of fighting all around them, from the floors above them and below, and from areas nearby. They crossed over a cell bay where all the cages had gunshot-riddled corpses sprawling in them. Pistol raised, braced, Gaunt led the way.