‘Opening three!’ Nomis called back as he threw the levers.
The outer hatch slid up, and the inner interlock doors opened.
Bonin entered first to sweep the cell. Then he re-emerged and waved in the other three.
It was about two minutes before they appeared. Hark knew that time had been spent adjusting shackles, removing deck-pins, and doing a tight search of hands, hems and mouth.
The four Suicide Kings appeared, advancing at a slow pace determined by the hobble-chain on the prisoner’s ankles. They flanked him in a square formation.
It seemed to take forever for them to escort Mabbon Etogaur to the vox-station. Every man in the room watched the Archenemy prisoner as he shuffled along.
Mabbon’s face lacked expression and personality. His shaved head was a mess of old ritual scars.
‘What has happened, m–’ he began to ask when he was brought to a halt.
‘Don’t ask questions,’ Rawne replied bluntly. He gestured to the vox-set. ‘Answer them. What is that, pheguth? What does it mean?’
Mabbon Etogaur cocked his scarred head and listened for a few moments.
Then he sighed deeply.
‘V’heduak,’ he said. ‘Four or perhaps five storm-teams are on board. To aft of the engine house, I think. They are making ground.’
‘What was that word?’ Hark asked.
‘V’heduak,’ replied Mabbon. ‘You’ve been boarded by the V’heduak.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Literally? “Blood-fare”,’ Mabbon replied. ‘It is part of a longer phrase… Ort’o shet ahgk v’heduak… which means, “Those that will claim a price or fare in blood in return for conveyance”.’
He glanced at Hark with his eerily expressionless face.
‘What it actually means,’ he said, ‘is that we are, to use Sergeant Varl’s vernacular, spectacularly fethed.’
Six: Pick Our Bones
Gaunt reached the bridge of the Armaduke about thirty seconds after Shipmaster Spika died.
Trailing the A Company command squad, with Criid on one side of him and Maddalena lurking on the other, he entered the bridge via the main arch and saw the crew gathering in a mob around a fallen figure.
Some of the bridge personnel – and there were an awful lot of them – had not left their stations or posts. Indeed, many could not because they were jacked and wired into their positions.
But even those who could not move were staring. Some were beginning to wail. Others had tears in their augmeticised eyes.
As soon as he saw that it was Spika, Gaunt pushed through the huddle, shoving robed bridge seniors and masters aside.
‘What are you doing?’ Gaunt asked them. As far as he could see they were all agitated and upset, but no one was offering any treatment.
‘He fell!’ one of the officers declared.
‘He fell down! The shipmaster fell down!’ moaned another.
‘I think it is his heart,’ said the officer of detection. ‘I think our proud ship is mortally struck, and the sympathetic pain has–’
Gaunt ignored him. He looked at Maddalena.
‘Get Curth!’ he cried.
‘But–’
‘I said get her!’ Gaunt yelled. Maddalena scowled, and then turned and ran from the bridge. Gaunt knew she was fast, faster than Criid, probably. Besides, he needed Criid and her authority.
Gaunt dropped to his knees and listened to Spika’s heart. The shipmaster lay on his back, his skin as white as wax and his eyes empty.
‘Feth,’ Gaunt murmured. He knelt up and began compressions.
‘Criid!’ he yelled as he worked.
‘Sir?’
‘Secure the bridge! Get these people away from the shipmaster! Get them back to work, dammit!’
Criid looked dubious. The senior officers and high-function servitors of the Armaduke seemed fearful and outlandish creatures to her. They were staring at Gaunt and the other newcomers with puzzlement and distaste, as if they were invaders or zoological specimens.
‘What if these good persons of the Imperial Navy do not recognise the authority of the Astra Militarum, sir?’ she asked.
‘Then see if they recognise the authority of a bayonet, Criid. Improvise.’
Gaunt kept working. Spika’s body didn’t betray the slightest hint of vitality.
Gaunt had saved lives before. His trade was taking lives, and he was miserably good at that, but he had saved a life or two in his time. Battlefield aid, trauma procedures. He had pumped lungs and hearts, bound up fast-bleeds with fieldwire tourniquets, and plugged gouting wounds with his fingers until the medicae arrived.
He was better at death than life, but the latter counted now. They needed Spika. More than that, Spika didn’t deserve this end.
‘Come on!’ Gaunt snarled as he worked.
‘We have been boarded,’ a man said.
Maintaining the compressions, Gaunt looked up. A stout, sandy-haired battlefleet officer was looking down at him. Silver brocade decorated his dark blue tunic. He was command branch, not a master of anything or an officer of any specific department.
‘We anticipated that,’ Gaunt replied, his hands working steadily.
‘You must clear the bridge,’ the officer said.
‘Can’t you see what the feth I’m doing?’ Gaunt asked.
‘Our beloved shipmaster, may the Throne bless his soul, has departed this life,’ said the officer. ‘Stress. He had been fairly warned. His health was an issue. We will mourn him. Now he is gone, the life of the ship is all that matters. You will clear the bridge.’
‘Like feth!’ Gaunt answered.
‘I am Subcommander Kelvedon,’ the officer said. His voice was light and dry, like long grass at the end of a summer season. ‘I stand second to the shipmaster in line of succession. At this hour of his death, I have command of the Armaduke. Its welfare is my business. You will clear the bridge.’
‘He isn’t even cold!’ Gaunt snapped. He regretted his words. Spika’s flesh, where Gaunt had torn open his frock coat and uniform shirt, seemed as cold as the void. Spika looked forlorn and forgotten, his chest a scrawny, shrivelled knot, like the belly of a fish. He had seemed a commanding man. Death had diminished him mercilessly.
‘Clear my damned bridge, sir,’ Kelvedon said. ‘Have your meat-head troops gather in their appointed billets and stay out of our way. This is a fighting ship. We will secure all decks and drive out the enemy.’
‘We fight better than you,’ replied Gaunt. ‘Imperial Guard. Astra Militarum. Best damned fighting bastards in the universe. Stop talking crap and collaborate with me, Acting Shipmaster Kelvedon. Spika knew our worth and how to profit from coordinated responses.’
‘Spika made decisions that I would not have made,’ replied Kelvedon. ‘This entire run was not battlefleet business. It was some kind of undistinguished smoke and mirrors blackwork by your Commissariat masters and–’
Kelvedon suddenly made a curious sound, the sound that a cargo-8’s tyre makes when it blows out. His eyes watered, his cheeks ballooned, and he sank to the deck, doubled up.
‘Knee in testicles,’ Criid announced to Gaunt as Kelvedon flopped onto his side in a foetal position. ‘That the kind of thing you had in mind?’
‘Superb work, Captain Criid.’
She half turned, then looked back.
‘You what?’ she asked.
‘I’ve been meaning to tell you,’ said Gaunt pumping at Spika’s chest with the balls of his palms, ‘there just hasn’t been a moment. Promotion, Tona. Captain. Company command, A Company. I want you to run my company.’
‘For kneeing some void-stain in the knackers?’ she asked.
‘I may have taken a few other factors into account. Your peerless combat record, for example. Now, Captain Criid, if you don’t mind, would you kick Acting Shipmaster Kelvedon in the testes a second time?’