Criid frowned.
‘Why?’ she asked.
Gaunt stopped compressions and sat back on his heels.
‘Because it would make me feel better. This isn’t working.’ He rubbed his hands together. The cold radiating from Spika’s corpse had seemed to leech into him, numbing his hands, his wrists, his forearm.
‘He’s fething dead,’ Gaunt sighed.
He rose slowly, stepped away from Spika’s pathetic corpse and over Kelvedon’s blubbering mass.
‘Who’s actually in charge here?’ he asked the bridge around him. ‘Not this blowhard runt,’ he added, gesturing back at Kelvedon. ‘Who is next in line? Come the feth on! This is an emergency!’
‘I am,’ said one of the robed figures waiting at the edge of the bridge platform. He stepped forwards. He was tall, as tall as Ezra Night, and just as rake-thin. His floor-length robes were blue, trimmed with an odd fabric that seemed opalescent. His eyes were gross augmetic implants, and one of his hands was a bionic spider. Input plugs and data cables threaded his neck, throat and chest.
‘Darulin, Master of Ordnance,’ he said to Gaunt, with a slight bow.
‘Ordnance has precedence over artifice and helm?’ Gaunt asked.
Darulin nodded.
‘A ship is its weapons. Everything else is secondary.’
‘Is it true that we’ve been boarded?’ asked Gaunt.
‘Available data says so. There is fighting in the engine houses.’
‘Who’s fighting?’
‘I misspoke,’ Darulin replied. ‘There is killing in the engine houses.’
‘Who has boarded us?’
‘The Archenemy,’ said Darulin.
‘How did they find us?’ asked Gaunt.
‘Consult the chronometer,’ Darulin invited, with a whirring spider-gesture. ‘A moment passed for us, but we are missing ten years. We are adrift. The Archenemy had time to detect and triangulate.’
‘What did you say?’ asked Gaunt.
‘The Archenemy had time to detect–’
‘No, before that.’
‘We are missing ten years. We have lost ten years because of the temporal distortion of the translation accident.’
Gaunt and Criid looked at each other.
‘We were only unconscious for a moment,’ murmured Criid. ‘A moment.’
‘Are you sure?’ Gaunt asked the Master of Ordnance.
‘Yes. Such time-loss is rare and troubling, but not unheard of. You are not void-experienced. You do not know such things.’
Gaunt regarded the deck for a moment, collected his thoughts, then looked back at Darulin.
‘We must coordinate a counter-assault,’ Gaunt said. ‘My regiment. Your armsmen.’
Darulin was about to respond when Ana Curth entered the bridge. A couple of Tanith corpsmen followed her, and behind them came Maddalena Darebeloved. Larkin, Beltayn and the rest of A Company gathered in the doorway behind, looking on grimly.
‘Who’s hurt?’ Curth asked.
‘The shipmaster,’ Gaunt told her. ‘It’s too late for him.’
Curth elbowed past Gaunt, heading for Spika.
‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ she told him. She paused and glanced back at Gaunt.
‘Don’t send your bitch to fetch me, ever again,’ she said.
He didn’t blink.
‘Behave like a professional,’ he replied.
Curth knelt beside Spika, examined him, and checked his vitals.
‘Compressions!’ she ordered at one of the corpsmen, who rushed to oblige.
‘I tried that,’ said Gaunt.
‘Let’s see what happens when somebody knows what they’re doing,’ she shot back. She opened her case, lifted the folding layers, and selected a hydroneumat syringe. She loaded it from a phial, checked it, flicked it, then swabbed a place over the carotid on Spika’s neck.
The needle slid in and she depressed the cartridge release.
Spika did not stir.
‘Shit,’ said Curth, and began mouth to mouth as the corpsman applied diligent heart massage.
Gaunt turned back to Darulin.
‘My regiment. Your armsmen. You were saying?’
His route to the drive chambers had been blocked by a corridor that had suffered catastrophic gravity collapse. Scout Sergeant Mkoll had switched to service ducts and crawlspaces. He was edging his way down an almost vertical, unlit vent tube when the vox finally woke up.
A voice crackled, dry in the cold darkness.
‘Advisory, advisory,’ the voice said. ‘The Archenemy is aboard this vessel. Arm and prepare. The Archenemy is in the drive chambers and advancing for’ard.’
Mkoll braced himself on a welding seam, legs splayed. The vent duct was sheer. He let his rifle, now strip-checked and reloaded, hang off his shoulder and adjusted his microbead link. Cold air breezed up at him from far below, bearing mysterious sounds of clanks and bumps.
‘That you, Rawne?’ he asked quietly.
‘Identify?’
‘It’s Mkoll.’
‘Where are you?’ Rawne asked over the link.
‘Like I’m going to tell you that over an open channel. Report.’
‘We’ve been boarded.’
‘I know. I’ve met some. Not sure what they are.’
‘Intel says six storm-teams, which means about seven hundred hostiles. V’heduak.’
‘What’s that when it’s at home?’ Mkoll asked.
‘No time to explain in detail. The Archenemy fleet, basically. Ever wondered how the Sanguinary Tribes get around? How the Blood Pact move from world to world? V’heduak, that’s how. And when they’re not acting as drivers for the bastard ground forces, they stalk the stars, looking for ships to pick off and plunder. We’ve been hit by cannibals.’
‘Tech cannibals?’
‘Yeah, and the rest.’
Mkoll fell silent for a moment. He felt the sweat bead on his forehead despite the chill breeze gusting from below him.
‘Where are you getting this intel from, Rawne?’ he asked.
‘You don’t want to know, Oan.’
‘But it’s reliable?’
‘As feth.’
‘Where are you?’ Mkoll asked.
‘In the brig, securing the asset.’
‘Rawne, is anyone moving aft to the drive chambers?’
There was a long pause.
‘Mkoll, it’s all a bit uncoordinated. The vox is choppy. I think Bask’s company is moving in. No word from Kolea. Nothing from Gaunt.’
Mkoll sighed.
‘Feth,’ he whispered to himself.
‘Say again?’
‘Hold the fething line,’ Mkoll said. ‘I’m going to take a look.’
Toe-cap and fingernail, he resumed his descent.
Ezra Night threw himself headlong into cover. Enemy fire whipped at him, exploding the bulkheads and wall braces behind him. Sparks showered. Pieces of plastek and alumina whistled through the air.
Ezra rolled. He brought up his lasrifle and clipped off two solid bursts of fire. Varl would be proud of him. Varl and Criid. Those who had taught him.
The enemy dropped. The Archenemy.
Ezra had been fought back into the rear spaces of the drive chambers, vast as they were. He was just one man facing squads of hundreds.
He would fight and die. Fight and die. That was what Ibram always said. Better to fight and die. Do you want to live forever?
A little longer would be nice, Ezra thought.
He aimed again, and fired a burst. Two attackers flipped over on their backs, their torsos blown apart.