The blood was the first sign Zhukova had seen of any of the ship’s crew.
Up ahead, Trooper Blexin raised a hand. He had stopped. She knew that tilt of the head. He’d heard something.
She was about to say his name. Blexin buckled and fell, sprays of blood gouting from his back as shots tore through him. Gunfire cut down the three men with him.
The company hit the walls, scrambling into cover behind bulkheads and hatch frames. Shots whined past. Zhukova hoisted her carbine, leaned out and snapped off return fire. Some of the men around her did the same. They had no idea what they were shooting at, but it felt good to retaliate.
The gunfire coming at them fell away.
‘Hold! Hold it!’ Zhukova shouted. ‘No wastage!’
She risked a step forwards, keeping to the wall. The first squad followed her, shuffling down the hallway, hunched, their rifles to their shoulders, tracking.
She edged past the bodies of Blexin and his mates. The deck plates quivered restlessly. She took another step. There was a sharp pistol-shot bang, and one of the plate’s restraining pins sheared. A corner of the plate lifted from the underfloor, flexing, straining, like a tent sheet caught by the wind, wanting to snap its guy wires and fly away.
Zhukova swallowed hard. Sliding her feet rather than stepping, she worked along the trembling plate. She guessed three or maybe four heavy duty pins were all that were keeping the damaged section down, all that stood between her and a grotesque fate squashed like a bug against the ceiling.
She stepped onto the next deck plate. It was firmer. Gorin, Velter and Urnos followed her. She could smell the garlic sausage stink of Urnos’ fear-sweat.
A shape moved in the drifting smoke ahead of her. She saw the enemy. Some robed heathen monster with a slit for eyes.
‘Hostile!’ she yelled, and snapped off two shots. The enemy trooper caught them both in the chest and slammed backwards. Answering gunfire raked out of the smoke, hard-round shots that swirled the smoke into plumes and weird spirals. She hit the wall, willing it to swallow her up. A bullet ripped open the musette bag on her hip. Velter went down, head shot, and Gorin toppled backwards, hit in the shoulder and chest. Urnos dropped on his belly and started to fire and yell.
The angle of the enemy fusillade altered, raking the deck, trying to hit Gorin and the yelling Urnos. Zhukova saw plating buckle. She saw the edge of the damaged plate she’d slid across taking hits.
‘Back! Back! Back!’ she yelled at the rest of the company behind her.
A deck pin blew out. No longer able to anchor the restless plate, the other pins sheared explosively under the strain. Unstable gravitics slammed the loosed deck plate into the ceiling like a flying carpet. It fell up the way a boulder falls down. There was a terrible, crunching impact. Zhukova had no idea how many of her trailing first squad had been standing on it when it broke free. All she saw was Gorin, who had been sprawled on his back across the join. The plate swept him up like a hoist and crushed him against the roof, crushed his head, arms and upper body. His legs, dangling clear, remained intact and hung, impossibly, like a pair of breeches strung from a washing line.
Dust and flames billowed along the tunnel. The firing stopped for a moment. Zhukova grabbed Urnos and hauled him up to the wall. She couldn’t see any part of her company in the tunnel behind her. All she could see was Gorin’s heavy, slowly swinging legs.
‘We’re screwed, captain,’ Urnos whined.
She slapped his face hard.
‘Get on your feet, Verghast!’ she said.
Gripping her carbine, she started to edge forwards. Urnos got up and followed her. She could hear the hoarse gulps of his rapid breathing.
‘This is madness…’
‘Just shut up, Urnos. Operate like a soldier.’
A few metres beyond, two bodies lay against the wall. Archenemy boarders. They were dirty and roughly armoured, patchwork soldiers that reminded Zhukova of the scratch companies that had hunted the Zoican Rubble. She had no idea who had cut them down. It could have been her or Urnos. She fumbled with their webbing, and found some hard-round clips, but nothing that would suit her carbine or Urnos’ rifle.
She heard movement from ahead. She pushed Urnos against the wall, then clamped her hand around his mouth and nose to dampen the noise of his frantic breathing.
Trapped smoke made the tunnel air thick and glassy. She saw two of the enemy picking their way towards them out of the haze. Two more followed. They were shrouded in heavy, filthy coats and their body-plate was dull and worn. Their faces were covered by blast visors or mesh hoods. Red light glowed from the visor slits, suggesting enhanced optics or even dark-sight systems.
But she’d spotted them before they’d spotted her. Verghast eyes were strong, and beat corrupt tech enhancements. Because Vervun was strong, built to endure and survive, its youth born strong into freedom, healthy and vital, in the image of the God-Emperor…
Zhukova swallowed. It was all so much bull. She’d been listening to Major Pasha’s patriotic speeches too long, listening to the crap spouted by the commissars as they conditioned the fighting schools.
The enemy hadn’t seen her because she and Urnos were cowering behind a wall strut. Another few seconds, and their optics would pick up their body heat through the ambient fuzz of the smoke. Optic enhancers didn’t necessarily mean heat-readers too, but Zhukova’s experience told her that the universe took every opportunity it could to be as cruel as possible.
They had to move, or they’d be dead in seconds.
She slowly withdrew her hand from Urnos’ mouth. She held up four fingers, then tapped herself and indicated left with two fingers. Then she tapped his chest and forked two fingers right.
Urnos nodded. He was scared out of his wits.
She made a fist he could see, and bounced it, one… two…
Three.
They came out of hiding together, firing. It was a simple, effective play, one the company had done in drill many times. She’d take the two on the left, he’d take the two on the right. Surprise was in their corner.
Their disadvantage was that Urnos, damn his garlic-reeking hide, didn’t know his left from his right.
The two boarders on the left went straight down. Zhukova had tagged one with a headshot, and the other had been slammed over by las-bolts from both their weapons. Urnos was in her way, jostling her, trying to occupy the half of the tunnel he thought she’d told him to be in. Her next shot went wide, and he put two precious bolts into the floor.
She never got to ask him if he was just plain stupid, or if the fear and tension had scrambled his wits.
The two raiders on the right returned fire immediately, before their comrades had even hit the deck. Muzzle flashes leapt and flickered in the closed space. Hard-rounds spat at them. Urnos took a round in the forehead and another in the cheek, the impacts twisting his face into a gross cartoon of itself. He rotated away from her, blood jetting from his ruptured skull, hit the far wall and slid down, his legs kicking.
Zhukova turned, unflinching, and dropped the raiders with single shots, pinpoint. She ran into the smoke, ducked into the shadows, and shot at the next wave of raiders as they pushed forwards, hitting them in the ribs and the sides of their heads.
She risked a look. More raiders were advancing on her. She snapped off a shot or two, and a hail of gunfire came in reply.
There was no one with her, no one behind her, not even close.
She could stay down and wait to die, or move and strike. It would cost her her life, but it was a chance to put a stop to the enemy advance. Scratch company tactics. She remembered Pasha’s lectures. Do the unexpected. Take the risk. Deal a wound to the enemy when you get the chance, even if you pay for it. Because it’s not you, it’s the fight entire. You do your part when you can. You don’t step back so you can enjoy reviewing the battle when it’s done, because the result you review will probably be a loss.