'Captain Mederic?' called Winterbourne, and he straightened his spine. Mederic marched over to where the colossal tank idled, the bone-shaking rumble of its engine like a force of nature.
'Sir,' said Mederic, holding onto the skirts of the tank to stop from falling over. He noticed that someone had written Meat Grinder on the skirt, and smiled despite his utter exhaustion.
'Damn fine job you did here, captain,' said Winterbourne. 'Slowed them up long enough for us to get the heavy stuff over from Brandon Gate. The savants said you couldn't do it, but I told them to go to hell. If anyone was going to hold the tau back it would be Mederic's Hounds.'
'Thank you, my lord,' said Mederic.
'Now get your men some food and water, captain,' said Winterbourne. 'If the report from Sergeant Learchus is right, we're going to see a lot more action here. These hills and forests aren't our kind of terrain, so I'm going to need your men sharp to keep the armour safe from those damn kroot and drone spotters. Are you up to the task?'
Mederic thought back to the red-quilled kroot leader and snapped off a salute.
'The Hounds don't leave a fight once it's started,' he said.
Jenna racked the pump of her shotgun and nodded to the enforcers who waited at her back. She eased along a walkway that opened on one side, towards the door to the chamber in which the tau had barricaded themselves. Behind her, fifteen men in black body armour and mirror-visored helmets came similarly armed.
On the opposite side of the door, another ten armed men carefully edged forwards, knowing that a number of armed alien warriors were behind it. The tau had a few weapons at best, but after Apollonia's death, Jenna was in no mood to take chances. She knew in all likelihood that Culla and Dion were also dead. She cared nothing for Culla, but Enforcer Dion's deaths sat like a lead weight in her stomach, and she knew she would have to deal with the guilt later. But for now, she had to restore order.
She glanced down into the courtyard of the Glasshouse, empty of prisoners now that a lockdown had been declared. The tower in the centre, normally a symbol of Imperial justice, seemed to be staring at her, the polarised glass dome at its summit mocking her with its unblinking gaze.
Jenna had gathered her enforcers immediately after fleeing the detention block, and their response times had been admirably swift. In less than ten minutes, two strike teams were assembled and mustered for action. She waved a two-man team equipped with a breaching ram and shaped charges.
'Enough to take the door off in one blast,' she ordered. 'No mistakes.'
With the order given, she waited a frustrating minute while the charges were rigged on the hinges. At last, the charges were ready to go, and Jenna took up position next to the door.
She opened a channel to all the enforcers under her command.
'No survivors. These bastards killed Culla and two of our own,' she said, neglecting to mention that she bore a measure of responsibility for those deaths. 'I want them all dead. Understood?'
Her enforcers acknowledged the order, and Jenna flattened herself against the wall.
Seeing that the men on the other side of the door had done likewise, she cocked her elbow and pumped her fist down twice in quick succession.
Two things happened at once.
The door hinges blew out with a dull whump and a clang of metal.
And hot propellant fumes filled the courtyard as an Orca drop-ship blasted the full force of its jets downwards to arrest its screaming descent.
Jenna covered her eyes as grit and acrid exhaust gasses billowed outwards. Through the haze and dust of the howling aircraft's engines she could see it rotating on its axis in midair, and hear the whine of a powerful motor spooling up.
'Oh hell,' she said, and dropped flat to the ground.
A sheeting storm of supersonic shells ripped along the length of the walkway, sawing through the waist-high barrier and turning its entire length into a hellstorm of explosions and death. Ten enforcers died in the opening second, cut apart and reduced to shredded mists of blood and pulped bone.
Jenna covered her ears, but the noise was too great to be blocked out. Shrieking detonations blew chunks of stone and rebar from the walls, and she felt a burning line across her back where a fragment of red-hot shell casing embedded itself in her shoulder. Something exploded behind her, and her leg spasmed as hot metal ripped into the meat of her thigh. Desperately, she pulled herself along the walkway, ignoring the pain in a frantic bid to escape the slaughter.
The cannons worked their way back and forth across the walkway until nothing was left alive. Bright lights flared in the smoke, and blazing darts of fire streaked away from the gunship, each swiftly followed by a booming explosion.
Guard towers. They're taking out the guard towers with rockets…
She thought the cannons stopped firing, but it was impossible to tell. The ringing echoes of the shooting and explosions were deafening. Jenna tore off her helmet and reached around to her shoulder, scrabbling for the hot shrapnel. She could feel its heat even through her gloves and gritted her teeth against the pain as she dug it from her flesh.
Gasping with effort and soaked in sweat, Jenna blinked away tears of pain and confusion. What was going on? Where had the tau gunship come from? She was sure the guns weren't firing anymore, and she tried to roll onto her side to see what was happening.
Thick clouds of smoke and dust obscured much of the walkway, but it was clear that there was nothing left alive. All of her enforcers were dead. Was this what mercy and notions of justice achieved? She screamed with frustration and looked around for a weapon. Her shotgun was lying a few metres away at the edge of a pool of glistening blood. The stabbing pain in her leg flared as she moved towards it, and she craned her neck to see how badly she was hurt.
The breath caught in her throat at the appalling mess. Spinning shrapnel had ploughed a wide furrow through her right thigh, leaving a gristly horror of rubbery-looking meat and exploded bone.
Her breath came in panicked hikes, but a cry of pain died in her throat as she saw the tau prisoners emerge onto the walkway. They had all looked the same to her before, but now it was abundantly clear which one was the leader. Nothing in their garb appeared to differentiate them, but the xenos she had instinctively known was not a warrior stood apart from the others. His bearing and stature were subtly different in ways that Jenna could not appreciate on a conscious level. She just knew that this one was special.
The drop-ship had stopped firing, and even the roar of its jets seemed to ease down in the presence of the tau leader. Jenna watched him move, her pain forgotten in the strange calm that enveloped her at the sight of so noble a being. It seemed strange she had not felt it in any of the others.
She crawled towards her shotgun, sweat running in rivers down her dust and tear-streaked face. Her skin felt cold and her vision was blurring. She guessed she was slipping into shock.
The instant the gunship opened fire, the dynamic between her and the tau shifted from prisoner and captor to enemies at war, and Jenna had no compunction about killing an enemy in battle.
Slowly Jenna pulled herself over to her weapon, determined to get one shot off at the murderous aliens. All her attention was fixed on the matt black finish of the shotgun's pistol grip, the gleam of reflected light on its trigger and the textured surface of the pump action. Her world shrank to the distance between her and the weapon. Only by focusing her entire will on this one task could she fight down the pain.