Then she stopped shooting.
Eadwine of the Silver Guard looked down briefly at the scorched shot marks on his torso plate. The bulk of him filled the ruptured doorway.
‘Unnecessary,’ he remarked, his voice a soft whisper through the helmet speaker.
‘M-my apologies,’ Zhukova replied, lowering her carbine. ‘Lord, I thought you were–’
‘Obviously,’ said Eadwine. He took two steps forwards. Each pace felt like someone had taken a door-ram to the deck. They heard the micro-whine of his armour’s power system as it flexed.
‘Nothing beyond?’ he asked Mkoll, towering over the Tanith scout.
‘There were plenty,’ said Mkoll, ‘but they retreated fast about five minutes ago. Heading this way.’
‘I met some,’ said Eadwine. ‘They no longer live. Others were moving rapidly towards the aft sections.’
‘What does it mean?’ asked Zhukova, daring to step forwards and approach the giant Adeptus Astartes warrior.
‘It means something is going on,’ replied Eadwine. ‘Something strange.’
Mkoll glanced at Zhukova.
‘Told you,’ he said.
‘Something’s going on,’ said Oysten, listening to the ’phones of her vox-set.
Hark and the Suicide Kings stood around her, watching.
‘And how would you define that exactly?’ asked Rawne.
‘Awry?’ suggested Varl.
‘It went quiet,’ said the vox-operator, ‘I mean really quiet, for a minute or two and then the transmissions restarted. They’ve gone berserk. No chatter discipline.’
‘We should get up there,’ said Bonin. Cardass nodded in agreement.
‘I believe you have particular duties here,’ said Hark, ‘and I believe Major Rawne shouldn’t have to remind you of that.’
‘I shouldn’t,’ Rawne agreed quietly. He was staring at Oysten. He was thinking, and that made him look more dangerous than usual.
‘Mach’s right though, inn’e?’ growled Brostin. The flame-trooper was sitting in a far corner of the brig, nominally watching the access shutter. His bulk overspilled the seat of his canvas folding chair. His greasy flamer kit lay around his feet, ready to uncoil, like a pet serpent.
‘Meaning?’ asked Hark.
‘If we’re dead,’ said Brostin, ‘if the ship’s dead, I mean… “spectacularly fethed”… then guarding wossname here is not so much a priority.’
He glanced at Mabbon.
‘No offence, your unholiness,’ he added. Mabbon didn’t reply.
‘If this is our last ditch, we should go down fighting like bastards,’ Brostin went on. ‘Give ’em fething hell as they choke us out, ’stead of skulking around in a fething prison block.’
‘To be fair,’ said Varl, ‘that’s what most of us have spent most of our lives doing.’
‘Not funny, sergeant,’ said Hark.
‘Sort of funny,’ said Mabbon quietly.
‘If we’re dead,’ said Bonin, ‘we should die with the rest. Alongside the rest. Fighting. Go to the Throne by giving a good account of ourselves.’
‘When have we ever not done that?’ asked Cardass.
‘And if there’s a chance we’re going to live through this,’ said Bonin, ‘then another company up at the sharp end has got to increase that hope.’
‘’specially us,’ said Varl.
‘They may need us right now,’ said Cardass. ‘We could be the strength that makes the difference.’
Hark looked at Rawne.
Rawne sighed.
‘We have a duty,’ Rawne said. ‘Clear orders to guard and protect. I’m not going to end my days defying an express fething order.’
He looked at Mabbon.
‘But we can work out how best to implement that order,’ he said. ‘Could be that the best way to protect our charge is to get out there and kill stuff a lot.’
‘You should make that your company motto, major,’ said Mabbon.
‘I want more intel,’ said Rawne. ‘I want to know how the situation has changed.’
Mabbon got to his feet off the metal stool they allowed him to sit on. Flanked by LaHurf and Varl, he shuffled back to the voxcaster, his shackles chinking.
Oysten nervously held out the headset. Mabbon shrugged and smiled back. His chained hands wouldn’t permit him to raise the headset to his ear.
‘Feth’s sake,’ grumbled Varl, and took the headset from Oysten. With a look of distaste, he pressed one cup of the headset to Mabbon’s right ear and held it there.
Mabbon tilted his head forwards, stooping slightly, and listened.
‘Busy… a lot of chatter…’ he said. ‘Oysten is correct. There is no discipline, and that is unusual. V’heduak sub-sonics and vox is usually ordered and economic. There is panic.’
‘Panic?’ said Hark.
‘We’ve kicked their arses, haven’t we?’ smiled Varl.
‘No,’ said Mabbon, still listening. ‘I can make out transmissions from unit leaders and command staff trying to quiet the panic. They are… they are repeatedly stating that the ship is taken, despite resistance, and that boarding forces should continue to their goals and complete objectives. They…’
‘They what?’ asked Rawne.
‘They say some unflattering things about their Imperial enemies,’ said Mabbon with an apologetic tone. ‘About how you are close to being crushed. I won’t translate. It’s just invective to stabilise morale.’
He listened some more.
‘But the seize units are in rout. They are breaking formation and falling back. They are abandoning their efforts to secure the ship. They… they don’t care about the ship any more. They care about… living. They are afraid of something.’
‘Us?’ asked Rawne.
‘No, major,’ said Mabbon. He stepped back from the vox-set.
‘They are afraid of the great destroyer,’ he said. ‘They are afraid of the Tormaggeddon Monstrum Rex.’
Ten: Visiting Death
Immense, the Archenemy battleship slid towards the helpless Imperial wreck. The real space engines of the Tormageddon Monstrum Rex pulsed lazily in the stellar twilight, growling circles of red light that flickered and wavered like dying suns. The battleship’s vast form, flaring back to jagged bat-wings, was almost entirely unlit, and the blackness of it blotted out the stars, as if the void, reflecting and emitting nothing, had become a living thing.
Its battery cowlings retracted like eyelids. In the opened gun-ports, weapons lit and began to shine like lanterns along its edge as power charged the feeding cables and generator ducts of the guns. Red volcanic light throbbed as it illuminated the ship from within, a ruddy glow within the charred black skin and bone of the monster’s hull.
It was still murmuring its name, like the distant ragged breathing of some oceanic behemoth.
‘Enemy vessel weapon banks have armed!’ sang out the adept manning data-acquisition.
‘Do we have weapons?’ Gaunt demanded.
Darulin shook his head.
‘All fire control systems are defunct,’ he replied. ‘We cannot arm or aim–’
‘Shields, then?’ Gaunt asked.
‘Stand by,’ said Kelvedon. He had taken station at a nearby console with the Master of Warding and three tech-adepts. The techs were attempting some kind of bypass, their augmetic hands fluttering over the banks of controls. Noospheric exchanges hissed between them as they frantically exchanged data. Gaunt could hear the squeaks at the very edge of his hearing.
‘Some port-side shielding may be viable,’ said Kelvedon. ‘Artifice has re-routed through secondary trunking.’