‘Can you get a shot?’ Pasha hissed to Larkin and Banda.
Larkin reset his position, his head low.
‘Stand by,’ he said.
‘You see any flash?’ Banda called to him.
Another round tore through the truck’s canvas cover.
‘Top row. Second window from the left,’ Larkin replied. ‘My angle’s not good.’
‘Mine is,’ said Banda. Her long-las banged. Everyone was down too tight to see where the shot impacted. Banda paused, and then fired again.
‘Hit?’ Pasha asked.
‘Not sure, ma’am,’ replied Banda.
‘Conserve, don’t waste,’ said Mkoll. ‘We’ve got feth-all ammo left.’
‘Yeah, I’m running on nothing,’ said Larkin.
Criid looked at Meryn. Between them, the pool driver was sobbing and wailing, and Meryn was trying to irrigate his eye wound with bright yellow counterseptic wash from his field kit.
‘Have you got anything? In the truck?’ she asked.
‘No fething idea,’ replied Meryn, struggling to keep the man still. ‘Fething nothing, is my guess.’
‘Find out!’ Mkoll snapped.
‘Didi,’ Meryn hissed, looking over his shoulder, ‘do as the chief says!’
Didi Gendler shot Meryn a ‘feth you’ look, then reluctantly squirmed around to the tailgate. Larkin and Banda both cracked off shots. Gendler bellied up into the truck’s rear, muttering curses, and began to rummage. A shot ripped through the cargo-8’s side wall, and they heard him swear colourfully.
‘You hit, Didi?’ Meryn shouted.
‘Gak you, no,’ they heard Gendler retort. More rummaging sounds.
‘I can’t get a good angle on that fether,’ Larkin complained.
‘There’s a thirty in here!’ Gendler called out. ‘A thirty and its stand.’
‘Ammo?’ called Mkoll.
‘No ammo!’
‘Get it out, get it down!’ Mkoll said. A .30 calibre support weapon could take the lid off the entire target structure. Gendler began to slide the carry cases to the tailgate. Pasha and Domor crawled around to lug them down.
‘I think there’s ammo for the thirty in one of the tail-end trucks,’ said Meryn.
‘Which one?’ asked Criid.
Meryn looked around.
‘Mkteesh? You were on loading. Which one?’
The Tanith trooper cowering nearby nodded. ‘Third one down, captain,’ he said.
‘Go fetch!’ Meryn ordered.
‘I’m with you,’ Captain Mklure said. He and Mkteesh got up, waited for another crack from Banda’s rifle, then began to run down the line of vehicles, heads low, scurrying.
Domor, Gendler and Major Pasha unboxed the .30 behind the rear wing of the truck. Criid heard another crack. She turned in time to see Mkteesh topple and fall. Desperately, Mklure started trying to drag him into cover, but Criid could see the man was already dead.
Mkteesh had fallen to his left, against the side of the cargo-8 two back from the one they were cowering behind.
To his left.
He’d been hit from the right.
‘Feth,’ Criid hissed.
‘We’ve got another one!’ she yelled. ‘Behind us!’
A second sniper had begun firing from somewhere in the derelict fabricatory that overlooked the front of the K700 billets. He had the whole yard spread out in front of him, including the line of trucks that were providing cover from the first shooter. They were pinned.
Everyone on the yard and the approach road tried to move to better cover. They crawled under vehicles or attempted to dash to the old hab blocks. A Munitorum aide went down halfway across the yard. A Ghost was smacked off his feet a few metres from a pile of crates. Criid saw a woman from the retinue sprawl sideways, ungainly.
‘Feth!’ Larkin said as he struggled to improve his position. ‘That’s more than one shooter! Two, maybe three more!’
Shots rained into the yard, sparking off the bodywork of the trucks. Some kicked up grit from the yard, or chipped dust out of the hab walls. A window shattered. A man from J Company was hit as he fled towards the latrine block. A squad mate ran to him and tried to drag his body out of the open. A shot took off the top of his head, and dropped him across his friend’s body.
As if encouraged by the increased fire rate from this second angle, the sniper in the cement works began firing again. The truck that was sheltering them started to shudder as shots tore into it from both directions.
‘Screw this,’ Mkoll murmured. Major Pasha, under the truck’s rear fender with the half-assembled .30, called out in alarm, but Mkoll was already up and running across the yard towards the hab.
Criid got up and ran after him.
Sustained shots from the fabricatory punched into the front of hab unit four, blowing the glass out of ratty windows and drilling holes through the aged masonry. Two men were hit in the crowd that had packed into the stairwell for cover, and another was clipped in the hab doorway. A tinker from the retinue collapsed in a third storey block room. The round had gone through the exterior wall before hitting him, and it still felled him with enough force to break his femur. People were shrieking and yelling, and children were screaming. Troopers wedged in the crowds that choked the lower hallways began to kick out the hab’s rear doors in the hope that people would be able to exit into the back lot and find better cover there.
On the third floor, shots whipped into the room assigned for Felyx Chass, shattering the window. Maddalena threw herself over Felyx, tackling him to the floor. Dalin ducked behind the bunk.
Maddalena looked fiercely at Dalin.
‘Get him out! The back stairs!’ she yelled.
‘To where?’ Dalin asked.
‘Anywhere out of the line of fire, you idiot!’ Maddalena snapped. ‘You want to be his special friend? I’m trusting you!’
‘But where are you–’
Maddalena flipped the cover off her powerful sidearm, and drew it so fast Dalin didn’t even see a blur.
‘I’m ending this stupidity,’ she replied. She bundled Felyx up, and shoved him at Dalin. Dalin grabbed the young man and rushed him out into the hallway, his hand pressed to the back of Felyx’s skull to keep him low. He glanced back, in time to see Maddalena take a run up and jump through the window.
Maddalena landed in the yard like a cat. Augmetic bone and muscle absorbed the impact. She rose, men fleeing for cover all around her, and fired a tight burst up at the fabricatory. The boom of her Tronsvass echoed around the yard, and caused more panic. She broke into a sprint and covered the yard. Her speed was inhuman.
Criid and Mkoll had reached the back wall of the fabricatory ruin. Zhukova, Nessa and Vivvo arrived too, from different parts of the yard, desperately slamming into cover, backs to the brickwork. Under the line of the mouldering wall, they were close to the shooters, but tight under their angle of fire.
Mkoll signed to Vivvo and Nessa – right.
They nodded, and began to edge that way. Nessa had her long-las, and Mkoll knew she had a decent personal reserve of ammo for it. She had been injured early on at the Reach, and had expended little.
Mkoll looked around at Zhukova and Criid. Zhukova was flushed and breathing hard. Her sprint from the south-west end of the billet yard had been frantic and bold.
Mkoll indicated an access point to their left. They nodded, and began to slide down the wall towards it. Shots echoed in the air above them.
Definitely three, Mkoll signed.
The access point was a filthy chute where a rainwater pipe had once run. The brickwork was rotten and slick with wet dirt, but there was a low roof three metres up, the sloped gutter line of an annex or storeroom. Zhukova jammed her back to the wall, and made a stirrup of her hands. Mkoll didn’t hesitate. He put his left boot in her hands, his left hand on her shoulder, and let her boost him to the rooftop. Zhukova grunted. A moment to check he wasn’t going to get his face shot off, and Mkoll hauled himself onto the sloping roof, belly-down.