‘Do any of you understand what “quickly” means?’ Banda gasped.
‘I’ve got the wire,’ said Criid. ‘I’ve got it at the top, where it meets the plate.’
‘Is it soldered?’ Mklaek asked.
‘No, it’s wound onto a metal terminal.’
‘All right. Good. So, without pulling it, unwind the wire and detach it.’
Staring at the deck, her arm in the hole, Criid grimaced. ‘That’s easier said than done. I can’t get hold of the end.’
‘When we’re done here,’ murmured Banda, ‘I’ve decided to kill everybody.’
‘If we don’t do this right,’ said Mklaek, ‘that won’t be necessary.’
‘I’ve got it,’ Criid said. ‘I’ve picked the strands loose. Wait. Wait…’
She looked at them.
‘It’s off,’ she said.
‘Are there any other wires?’ Mklaek asked.
‘Oh, what?’ cried Banda.
Criid gingerly felt around.
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, there’s– wait. No. No other wires.’
‘Then we lift it off,’ said Mklaek.
Criid drew her arm out. She and Mklaek got their fingers under the plate beside Banda.
‘On three,’ said Criid.
‘Three,’ said Banda.
They lifted.
As it came away, the deck plate exposed a dull grey anti-tank mine buried in soil beneath. A wire trailed from the pressure pin on the top.
They put the plate down on the path beside the hole.
‘I have to make it safe,’ said Mklaek, taking out a pair of pliers and kneeling beside the mine.
‘I do not want to do that again,’ said Criid.
Raess fired. The shot was perfect. The saline charge blew the firing cap assembly out of the device under the bridge span.
But the recoil also made the gantry shiver unpleasantly.
Preed lined the tagger up on the second trigger cap quickly. Raess scooped the waiting round up off the deck beside him and reloaded.
He reset his scope and locked on the point that Preed was tagging. His finger curled around the trigger, ready to squeeze.
Small flakes of rusty metal trickled down from overhead, disturbed by the recoil. Mktass caught one before it landed.
A second, no bigger than a rose petal, landed on the first span of the bridge.
‘Oh f–’ Mktass began.
The pressure switch clicked. The second charge, at the far end of the bridge, blew.
The force of the detonation instantly shredded the entire length of the bridge into rust particles and ignited the first charge. The combined blast lit the chamber like a supernova.
Mktass, Preed, Sairus, Brennan and Raess were simply atomised. Concussive pressure split the chamber walls and forced a titanic shockwave back down the access tunnel. The pressure blast liquidised Sergeant Gorlander and the troop element waiting in the passageway behind them.
The rushing, sucking fireball that squirted up the tunnel incinerated the pulped remains a millisecond later.
TWENTY-ONE
Salvation Lost
The convoy of Tauros vehicles had reached the inner hatch that led into the occupied section of the Reach. Blenner, Wilder and their team stood guard by the vehicles. Gaunt had sent troops back from the college to collect the carry crates and begin the extraction of sensitive materials.
Wilder was pacing.
‘Calm down,’ Blenner told him, but only because the pacing was making him feel more tense himself. They were exposed, literally right on the doorstep of the enemy holding. The smells of squalid decay and putrefaction coming out of the hatch were horrifying.
He looked at Felyx. The boy was standing by the tail board of his vehicle, watching the dark cavities around them for movement. He was holding his weapon too tightly.
Blenner tried to think of something encouraging to say, but he had used up all his banter on Perday on the ride in.
The bang made them jump. The ground shuddered. Pressure shock popped their ears so hard many of them cried out and dropped their guns.
A second later, they felt the rush of hot wind come at them down the tunnel, and smelled the grit and fyceline.
‘Damnation,’ said Blenner. ‘What just happened?’
Merrt was lining up to take a shot when the ground shook. They all felt it. Pieces of junk trickled down from the roof. The distant boom came a second later and then, like a feverish sigh, the rush of burned air.
The team members looked at each other.
‘Feth,’ said Vahgner.
‘Somebody just got unlucky,’ said Daur.
It was like a grenade going off behind them. A violent tremor ripped through the floor, and a shockwave of noise, heat and pressurised air slammed through the chamber into them. Criid, Banda and Leyr were all knocked over. Somehow Chiria kept her feet.
They all knew what it was. They knew instantly. One of the other clearance teams had set something off. It was close by, too. Who? Mktass’s bunch? Mkoll’s?
It was the noise, the blink of annihilation, that they had been dreading all day, the thing they had been braced for, the thing they had been yearning and willing not to happen.
It hadn’t happened to them. Someone else had got unlucky. It hadn’t happened to them.
But it might as well have done.
Mklaek had been in the process of removing the firing pin from the floor mine they had finally exposed. Keeping his hand as still as possible, he had been lifting the pin he had unscrewed clear of the socket, slowly and cleanly, making sure no extra wires were attached. Criid was rolling her sleeve back down and putting her gloves back on. Banda was trying to flex life into her fingers and arms from holding the deck plate.
He had been a millimetre or so away from lifting it clear when the blastwave hit them.
‘Mklaek?’ Criid cried, getting up.
Mklaek was prone on the deck, belly down, his face over the anti-tank mine. His hand was on the trigger pin, still holding it. The blast had made him touch it against the rim of the socket. He didn’t dare move. He didn’t dare break the contact.
‘Mklaek?’ Criid repeated. She and the others moved towards him.
‘Don’t come any closer,’ he hissed, trying not to move. ‘Don’t come any closer. Run. Get the detachment running.’
‘Feth that!’ said Banda.
‘I’m not kidding!’ Mklaek whispered, his eyes wide. ‘Run, you stupid bastards! Run now. I think this has gone live! I think it’s live and I can’t hold it forever. Run!’
‘No way–’ Criid began.
‘Run!’ Mklaek rasped, almost a wail of desperation.
They looked at each other.
‘We can’t–’ Criid began.
Leyr and Banda grabbed her and bundled her towards the passageway behind them. They started running, Chiria too, labouring with the weight of the flamer tank. The troop detachment saw them coming and needed no encouragement to turn and run as well. They fled down the tunnel, full sprint. Leyr and Banda had to virtually drag Criid.
Mklaek held on for as long as he could. When his fingers finally began to give out, he lifted the pin away from the socket.
Nothing.
‘The Emperor protects,’ he murmured, tears of relief in his eyes.
The tank mine exploded.
They felt the detonation rather than heard it. The copper flooring of the college hall shivered. The lamps rattled and stirred.
Gaunt turned to look at Mkoll, and as he did so they both felt the pressure shift of air passing through the chamber. Gaunt could taste the heat and the dry stink of explosives.
‘That was big,’ he said.
Mkoll didn’t reply. He knew they’d just lost someone. A lot of people, probably. Perhaps that had been the sound of them losing the fight, the mission, and everything they’d come for.