Mkoll had reached the base of the belfry on the opposite side to the shooter’s vantage point. He signed to Zhukova – sustained.
She nodded back, adjusted her grip on her weapon, and lined up. She waited as Mkoll started to haul himself up the outside of the belfry, clawing up the old brickwork with fingers and toes. He reached the window on the opposite side to the shooter.
Time for a distraction.
Zhukova started to fire. She peppered the stonework around the shooter’s slot with shots, splintering the stone surround and the window’s ornate frame, and raising a billowing cloud of dust. The shooter stopped firing, and ducked back to avoid glancing injury. He was probably surprised to come under fire from such a tight angle. Zhukova fired some more, then paused to check on Mkoll.
There was no sign of the chief scout. During her distraction fire, he must have crawled in through the other window. Zhukova tensed, and started shooting again. More distraction was needed, fast.
She peppered the window area again. Her ammo was low.
Mkoll slid down into the darkness of the belfry, silent. The air was close and dusty, and stank of gunsmoke. He could hear Zhukova’s suppressing fire cracking against the far side of the small tower. He squinted to adjust his eyes to the darkness after the bright daylight outside. Movement, beyond the jumble of boxes. A man crouching to get ammo clips out of a canvas satchel.
Mkoll was about to shoot. The man was only two metres away, and hadn’t seen him.
Mkoll hesitated. The man wasn’t the shooter. Though he couldn’t see directly, Mkoll was aware of a second man just out of sight around the corner in the alcove facing the other window. The man he could see had no rifle. He was the loader, fetching fresh clips to feed the shooter at the window. If he shot him, the other guy would react and that would lead to the sort of tight-confine firefight Mkoll considered distinctly disadvantageous.
Mkoll slung his rifle and drew his blade. Using the darkness and the low beams as cover, he edged around the belfry dome and grabbed the loader from behind. Hand over mouth, straight silver between the third and fourth ribs. A moment of silent spasm, and the man went limp. Mkoll set him down gently.
Zhukova’s firing had stopped. She was probably out of ammo. Mkoll heard the shooter call out.
‘Eshbal vuut!’ More ammo, fast!
‘Eshett!’ he called back. Coming!
He picked up the heavy satchel, and moved towards the alcove. The shooter was crouching in the window slot, his back to him. He was clutching his heavy, long-build autorifle, reaching a hand back insistently for a reload.
He started to turn. Mkoll hurled the satchel at him. The weight of it knocked the man back against the window. One-handed, Mkoll put two rounds into him with his lasgun before he could get back up.
Mkoll picked up the shooter’s autorifle, and threw it through the window.
‘Clear!’ he yelled.
Captain Mklure slithered into cover beside the cargo-8. He was clutching two drums of ammo for the .30. He was soaked with Mkteesh’s blood.
Major Pasha grabbed one of the drums, and locked it into position on top of the assembled support weapon. Domor already had his hands on the spade grips, and was turning it to face the cement works.
‘Locked!’ Pasha yelled.
Domor opened fire. The weapon let out a chattering roar like a piece of industrial machinery. The upper floor of the cement works began to pock and stipple. Black holes like bruises or rust-spots on fruit started to appear, clouded by the haze of dust foaming off the impact area. Then the wall began to splinter and collapse. Chunks of rockcrete exploded and blew out, fracturing the upper level of the ruin.
Drum out, Domor eased off the firing stud.
‘Load the other one,’ he said.
‘Did we get him?’ asked Pasha.
‘Are you joking?’ Meryn snorted. ‘Shoggy took the top off the building.’
‘Wait,’ Larkin called out.
They waited, watching. The dust was billowing off the structure in the damp afternoon air.
‘You made him scram down a floor,’ whispered Larkin, aiming.
‘How do you know?’ asked Domor.
‘I just saw him in a first floor window,’ said Larkin. His weapon fired one loud crack.
‘And again,’ he said, lowering his rifle.
Criid paused. She’d just heard sustained fire from a support weapon. The Ghosts in the yard behind her had finally got something heavy up to tackle the sniper in the cement works.
It was quiet on the roof. There’d been some firing from the west side of the building a couple of minutes before. She presumed that was Mkoll and the Verghastite. Things had gone still since then. She was high up, and the wind coming in across the city buffeted her ears. Maybe they’d dealt with them all, or driven them off.
She heard a sudden crack. A rifle shot. Then a quick burst from an automatic handgun. Another louder, single shot.
Silence.
A figure broke cover on the roof ridge ahead of her. A man in filthy combat fatigues, lugging a scoped long gun. He was trying to scramble down her side. Hastily, she whipped up her lasgun and fired, blowing out roof tiles on the ridge to his left.
He flinched and spotted her, swinging his rifle up to fire. He got off one round that missed her cheek by a finger’s length. Criid put three rounds through his upper body. He jerked a hammer-blow shock with each one, then pitched sideways. His limp body, almost spread-eagled, slid down the incline of the roof towards her, and rolled into a heap at the foot.
Her rifle up to her shoulder and aiming, Criid hurried forwards. The shooter was dead. No need to even check. Were there any more?
She went around the edge of the slope via a parapet onto a stretch of flat roof beyond. The space was jumbled with abandoned extractor vents, all rusting and pitted, and stacks of broken window frames lined up against the low lip of the roof.
No one in sight. She decided to circle back and find Mkoll and Vivvo.
She heard a sound. A chip of glass tinkling as it dislodged and fell.
She looked back at the stacks of window frames. She saw the foot sticking out.
She ran to it.
Maddalena Darebeloved lay on her back in the pile of frames. She’d crushed and shattered them. There were fragments of glass everywhere. Her weapon was still in her hand, but it was locked out and empty. Her face was as red as her bodysuit, glazed with blood that also matted her hair. She’d been hit twice by long gun fire. The first wound was to her hip, and it was cripplingly nasty, but probably not lethal. The second, to her head, was a kill shot.
Her eyes were still wide open. Droplets of blood clung to her eyelashes.
‘Oh, feth,’ Criid murmured.
Maddalena blinked.
Criid scrambled down beside her, ignoring the pain as glass chips dug into her knees and shins.
‘Hold still! Hold still!’ she said. ‘I’ll get a medic!’ How was the woman still alive with a wound like that?
Maddalena was staring at the sky. She let out a sigh or a moan that seemed to empty her lungs.
‘I’ll get a medic!’ Criid told her, fumbling in her pack for a dressing or anything she could pack the wound with.
‘Criid–’ Maddalena said. Her voice was tiny, her lips barely moving. It was almost just a shallow breath.
‘I’ll get a medic,’ Criid reassured her.
‘Look after–’
‘What?’ Criid bent to hear, her ear to Maddalena’s lips. Blood bubbled as the lifeward spoke.
‘Look after…’ Maddalena repeated. ‘You have children. You know. You know how. You–’
‘Stop talking.’