He allowed for air drift, and the rifle’s innate inclination to dip and rise on discharge. The weapon had a tiny left-hand bias, which Larkin had corrected for by adjusting the sights with a watch maker’s screwdriver. Merrt let his tension out, then let all the air in his lungs go, a long slow exhalation so that even the stir of respiration or the tremble of suspended breathing wouldn’t affect the aim. The only thing he couldn’t reduce was the infinitesimal quake of his heartbeat, so he timed to fire between beats. Beat… line up the shot… beat… check the line… beat… fire.
The shot echoed down the cavity. The round clipped the lip of a tin pot, and made it judder. He’d been aiming for a mark on the pot about a middle finger’s distance away from what he’d actually hit.
Hopeless. Fething hopeless.
To even be considered for a lanyard, he’d have needed to partially overlap the target spot.
‘That is a poor shot.’
Merrt jumped. It wasn’t so much that someone had surprised him, it was that someone so big had miraculously appeared in his line of sight.
He scrambled up, knocking over the stand.
‘Gn! Gn! Gn!’
Surprise gave way to fear.
The White Scar squinted down the range, then looked back at the human with the rifle.
‘Very poor,’ said Sar Af. ‘Pathetic. Why do you even bother?’
‘Gn… gn… gn…’
‘Speak up? Are you simple?’
‘I’m gn… gn… gn… practising!’
Sar Af frowned. He coughed, and then rubbed the tip of his nose with armoured fingers that could crush bone.
‘You will be here a long time,’ he said.
‘I’ve been here a long gn… gn… gn… time already,’ said Merrt.
Sar Af nodded. He held out his hand.
‘Give it to me.’
His voice reminded Merrt of Jago. Dry winds, gusting forlornly through dusty valleys. Sandstone eroded by the air. Merrt handed him the rifle.
Sar Af took it; a stick, a toy. He sighted down the barrel, holding it one-handed, as if to check the barrel was actually straight. The trigger guard was entirely too small for his fingers.
He handed it back.
‘I cannot use that. Shoot again.’
‘Sir?’
‘Again.’
Merrt reached to reset the stand and pick up the sand socks.
‘Do not bother with that. Just take a good shot from where you are. Just aim and shoot.’
Merrt slunked the bolt, ejected the shell case, took another round out of the box at his feet, and chambered it. He glanced at the Space Marine. The giant was simply staring down at him, impassive.
Merrt put the gun up to his cheek, chose a tin cup, sighted, breathed out, and fired. The shot clipped the cup hard enough to spin it off the block. It made several dull, hollow sounds as it bounced on the hold deck.
‘Still pathetic,’ said Sar Af. He looked at Merrt ‘Good enough for Guard fire on a field, I suppose, but not precise enough for anything else.’
Merrt didn’t know what to say.
The White Scar was still looking at him, but his mind was far away. It felt to Merrt like the Space Marine was precisely playing back at a painstakingly slow rate the memory of Merrt taking the shot so he could analyse it.
He stopped, looked back at Merrt, and then suddenly reached out a hand, grabbing Merrt by the jaw and throat. The hand turned Merrt’s head to the side. Merrt struggled and choked.
‘This jaw. This augmetic repair, it is your problem,’ said Sar Af. ‘You are being defeated by your own concentration. Your focus is so intense that as you fire the gun, it stimulates the neurodes in your jaw and you twitch.’
‘I gn… gn… gn… twitch?’
‘Just as you fire. Your jaw clenches.’
Sar Af let him go.
‘It is physically impossible for you to shoot well.’
Merrt swallowed.
‘Come back again tomorrow,’ said Sar Af.
The main refectory was in the mid decks. The walls and floor were plated with dull, galvanised steeling, and the metal tables and benches were bolted in place. There was a constant clatter of utensils and dishes against metal surfaces, and the air frequently fumed with steam from the galley.
Wilder picked at the slab on the plate in front of him.
Meryn sat down opposite. He had a covered dish of food and a tin beaker. Meryn drank the contents of the beaker in one swallow, then slid the empty beaker across the table to Wilder.
Wilder looked at the cup. Meryn took a fork out of his top pocket and began to eat.
‘How’s yours, Jakub?’ he asked, pleasantly.
Wilder didn’t reply. He picked up the empty beaker and looked in it. There was a little brown paper wrap in the bottom of the cup.
‘What’s that?’
‘Happiness,’ replied Meryn, still eating.
‘For me?’
Meryn chewed to empty his mouth before replying.
‘They’ll make our mutual friend Blenner happy, which is the same thing.’
Wilder put the cup down again as if he had no intention of touching the little bag of narcotic pills.
‘Where are they from?’
‘Costin,’ said Meryn.
‘He grows them on a special tree, does he?’
‘Do you want them or not?’
Meryn leant his elbow on the table, rocking the fork in his hand. He stared at Wilder, chewing another mouthful.
‘Do you know where we’re going?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said Wilder.
Meryn sighed.
‘Yes, I suppose if I don’t get told, you certainly wouldn’t.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means some people get on and some don’t, Jakub. Some people enjoy favour. You were right, what you said to Gendler about Gaunt’s brat.’
‘Why would I have lied?’ asked Wilder.
‘No reason. Gaunt’s got my adjutant running around looking after the spoiled little brat. The kid’s no soldier. Not old enough. Doesn’t look like he’s done a hand’s turn in his life. Certainly never fought. He’d blow away if the Archenemy so much as farted. Got his own cabin, though.’
‘His own cabin…’
Meryn grinned.
‘Can you believe that? Gaunt pretends he wants him treated like all the others, like every common lasman, but then his psychobitch lifeguard – because every common lasman has a lifeguard, don’t they? Then his lifeguard says he can’t share a general billet with other men. Oh no. She insists. She needs him behind a door she can defend.’
‘She said this to Gaunt?’
‘Of course not,’ said Meryn. ‘She says it to me. See how he did that? He declares that we’re going to treat the brat like everyone else, then makes it my problem, so that the stink of favouritism doesn’t stick to him.’
‘What did you do?’ asked Wilder.
‘Gave him the small end cabin on the officer quarter block near mine.’
Wilder sat back, and sipped from his beaker.
‘Doesn’t that undermine Gaunt’s wishes?’ he asked.
‘Gaunt’s passive aggressive. He says one thing, but he means another. Come on, Wilder, you know how this goes. If I’d stuck to my guns and made the boy sleep in the general barrack, I’d have suddenly found myself getting all the shit details. It would have become E Company’s turn to hose out the latrines, or spearhead the next attack.’
‘So Gaunt gets his way and it looks like someone else’s idea,’ said Wilder.
‘You’re beginning to see the Imperial truth,’ grinned Meryn.
‘Why do you hate him so much?’
Meryn shrugged.
‘He killed my world. My life. That deserves payback, sooner or later. But it’s not that, so much. Everything I have, everything I’ve built up, I’ve made it for myself. Company command. Rank. Privilege. Influence. I did it all myself. I don’t get things handed to me. I’m not part of his inner circle.’