by Dan Abnett
Daur looked at Leyr, and the big scout looked uncomfortable. Daur looked at Varl, but Varl sniffed and looked at the floor. He looked at Cant. The young trooper just looked scared.
“This is Balhaut!” Daur declared. “This is gakking Balhaut, for Throne’s sake. We’re so far from the front line it’s not even worth joking about. Who the gak’s going to attack Commissariat Section in the middle of Balopolis…”
His voice trailed off. He looked at Banda. She looked back at him, smiled a little sad smile, and shook her head.
He looked at Rawne.
“Major? Come on, help me out here,” said Daur.
Rawne looked at him.
“It’s not a drill,” Rawne said.
Daur opened his mouth, and then closed it again.
“Feth,” he said, eventually.
The cell bay door clanged opened. A detention officer burst in and stared at them all for a moment, his eyes flicking from one cage to the next: the seven Ghosts, the slumbering Oudinot, and the lone Varshide in the cell next to Rawne’s.
The detention officer looked scared and bewildered. His hair was messed up and his jacket was buttoned up wrong. He looked like someone who had just woken from a bad dream.
Through the open bay door behind him, they could all hear the sirens much more clearly.
The detention officer took a last look at them, as if he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be doing.
“Stay here,” he told them, and ran back out, pulling the hatch shut behind him.
Varl looked through the bars at Rawne.
“You know,” he said, “sometimes people say the stupidest things.”
The shots outside made them start and tense: two shots, just on the other side of the hatch. Instinctively, all of the Ghosts backed away from the fronts of their cages.
“What the hell’s happening?” the Varshide trooper mumbled.
The cell bay hatch opened again. From outside, they could hear shouting, clattering footsteps and repeated gunfire.
Kaylb Sirdar swung in through the detention block hatchway, his carbine raised.
Prisoners. The sirdar saw prisoners, just prisoners in cages, all staring at him in pathetic terror. Check them. Find the pheguth. Kill the pheguth. Kill anyone who wasn’t the pheguth. The men of his element were spreading out through the bays of the cellblock doing just that. He could hear the shots.
The sirdar stepped forward. He saw the eyes staring back at him, wild, animal eyes; caged men who recognised death when it approached.
Rawne watched the man approach. He took in the ragged, dirty combat gear, second — or third-hand at least, the purposeful pose, the confident, well-trained advance. Only one detail mattered. The scowling iron mask that the man was wearing over his face identified him very clearly. It was the fighting grotesk of a Blood Pacted warrior.
He heard Cant whisper, “Holy Throne.”
The sirdar reached the first cage. He had the carbine’s stock tucked up against his shoulder, aimed down and wary. He stared at the blinking Varshide trooper through the bars.
“Who are you supposed to be?” the Varshide slurred.
Kaylb fired between the bars of the cage. The two shots hit the Varshide in the chest, and threw him against the back wall of the cage. His corpse overturned the cot and the covered chamber pot beside it as it crumpled onto the cell floor. The sour smell of stale urine filled the cell bay, and mingled with the acrid reek of scorched flesh and cooked blood.
The next cage in line was Rawne’s. Rawne didn’t move as the killer advanced towards him. He kept his eyes locked on the grotesk.
Kaylb looked the next prisoner up and down quickly, and then raised the carbine to execute him.
“Voi shet, magir!” Rawne said.
Kaylb froze.
“Ched qua?” he replied.
“Voi shet, magir,” Rawne repeated, stepping closer to the bars, his hands open and visible. “Eswer shet edereta kyh shet.”
Kaylb came closer, the gun still aimed at Rawne’s chest.
“Shet atraga gorae haspa?” he demanded. “Voi gorae haspa?”
Rawne smiled, and said, “Fuad gahesh drowk, magir.”
“Ched?” the sirdar queried.
“Abso-fething-lutely,” said Rawne and shot his arms out through the cage. His left hand grabbed the carbine’s barrel and yanked it in between the bars. The weapon fired, but the shot struck the back wall of the cell, harmlessly. Rawne’s right hand had seized the sirdar by the collar. Taken by surprise, the sirdar found himself being dragged headfirst into the cage door. Rawne slammed him into the cage so they were face to face with only the bars between them. Though the sirdar still had his right hand clamped to the carbine, most of the weapon was pulled through the bars and wedged against them by Rawne’s vicing left-hand grip. The weapon fired again. Two more futile las-bolts left scorch marks on the back wall.
It was ail happening too fast for the sirdar. Kaylb started to cry out, to fight back. He clawed at Rawne through the bars with his left hand.
Teeth bared, Rawne began to slam the sirdar’s face against the bars with his right hand. His grip on the collar was so tight that he was already choking off the man’s air. In a furious, steady, almost mesmeric motion, Rawne began to pump his right arm in and out, smashing the iron-masked face of the pinned man off the bars over and over again. It was like the action of an industrial stamping press. Rawne didn’t have the time, space, opportunity or means for a single clean killing blow, so he compensated with frenetic quantity.
By the eighth blow, the sirdar had begun to struggle with real fury, and the carbine fired again. By the tenth, his teeth were broken, and there was blood spattering out of his shuttling head. By the twelfth, there was blood and nicks on the bars. By the fifteenth, the grotesk had cracked, and the sirdar’s head had become a limp, lolling punch bag, snapping to and fro.
Kaylb Sirdar finally tore free, somewhere around the seventeenth blow. He staggered backwards, drunken and swaying, howled a curse to the Kings of the Warp, and shot Rawne.
Except he was no longer holding his carbine. Rawne still had it in his hand.
Rawne swept the weapon in between the bars, rotated it end-over like a piece of show-off parade ground drill, aimed, and fired out of the cage without hesitation.
The las-bolt hit Kaylb Sirdar in the forehead, and hammered him back into the bay wall. The grotesk split in half, and the two pieces flew off his face and bounced away across the deck in opposite directions.
The sirdar slid down the wall, and finished up, dead, in a sitting position, his head tilted to one side. He had left a long streak of blood down the wall above him. If he had been alive to see it, Kaylb Sirdar would have recognised that the prognostications of the blood mark were not good.
Rawne lowered the carbine.
“Holy shit,” breathed Meryn.
“Wh-where did you learn to talk that language?” Cant whispered.
“Yeah, Cant, this is really the time for that conversation,” said Banda.
Rawne poked the snout of the carbine into the cage lock and pulled the trigger twice, enough to blow the mechanism. He swung his cage door open and headed for the exit.
“Hey. Hey!” Meryn yelled. “Where the feth are you going? What about us?”
“He’s going to check we’re secure, and then he’s going to get the keys,” said Varl calmly. “Feth, Meryn, what are you, a child?”
Rawne reached the bay hatch and peered out, the carbine ready. There was a lot of shooting going on outside, quite close by. The smell of burning was intense. He could see smoke in the air now. He could hear screams. In the neighbouring cell bays, prisoners were being slaughtered.
He pushed the hatch to, and opened the wall box where the detention officers kept the cage keys. They jingled as he shook them out in his hand and hurried back to the cage row.
“Unlock and get out, fast,” he said passing the keys to Varl, the first in line. “We’re getting out of here.”
“If we stay here, we die,” Rawne said, cutting Daur off. “We get out, and find out what the feth’s going on. Then we worry about the consequences.”
Prisoner B turned his head to look at Gaunt as he entered the sick green light of the tank cell. He looked at the bolt pistol in Gaunt’s hand without a blink or the sign of an expression.
Then he turned his head again and sat looking straight ahead.
“There’s no time for a conversation,” Gaunt said.
“I know,” said the etogaur.
“We have an understanding?” asked Gaunt.
“Just do it,” the prisoner replied.
With his free hand, Gaunt began to unbuckle the shackle cuff pinning Prisoner B’s left arm to the chair. Prisoner B looked around at him, startled.
“What?” asked Gaunt.
“I thought—”
“What?”
“I thought you were going to execute me.”
“I will. Give me the slightest excuse, and I will,” Gaunt said, working at the next set of buckles. He kept glancing over his shoulder at the door.
“I will give you no reason to—”
“You wanted us to trust you,” Gaunt snapped. “You wanted me to trust you. I don’t and I probably won’t. But you wanted my help to stay alive because you swore you could help us. One chance. Do not test me.”
“I will not, Gaunt.”
“Don’t use my name either.”
“Of course,” said Prisoner B.
Gaunt unclasped the body straps and shook them off the etogaur’s shoulders.
“Are your hands numb? Your fingers?”
“No,” said Prisoner B.
“Then get the buckles on the leg straps undone,” said Gaunt.
Prisoner B leaned over in the restraint chair and diligently began to undo the heavy iron buckles on the leather straps binding his legs. Gaunt crossed back to the heavy tank door and peered around it. The hallway outside was empty, but he heard a loud burst of full auto-fire, close by. Somewhere else, someone was screaming.
He could smell smoke, and he could hear some kind of… keening sound.
He ducked back into the tank cell, and looked over at Prisoner B. The prisoner had managed to free one leg.
“Hurry up!” Gaunt yelled.
There was a noise outside. He went back to the door. Looking around its rim, he was in time to see a detention officer and a sanctioned torturer fly in through the door at the far end of the interrogation unit. The detention officer was backing up, frantically blasting a lasrifle from the hip at unseen targets beyond the door. The torturer was simply running for his life, hurtling along the white-tiled hallway towards the heavy door half-concealing Gaunt.
Answering fire hammered in through the doorway, and cut down the detention officer, who simply crumpled and collapsed. Two or three more stray shots whined in, and then an armed man burst through the door, bounding over the dead detention officer. He was armed with an old lasrifle and dressed in shabby combat gear. A man dressed just like him appeared on his heels.
Both were wearing black-iron grotesks.
The first of them raised his rifle and pinked off a shot that hit the fleeing torturer in the spine, bringing him down hard. Belly down in a pool of blood that looked glossy, like spilled enamel paint against the polished white of the corridor’s tiling, the torturer tried to drag himself forward. His legs were useless.
He saw Gaunt behind the heavy, open cell door ahead of him.
“Help me!” he gurgled.
A las-round took the top of his head off.
Gaunt swung out from behind the door and fired his bolt pistol. The shot hit the first of the Pacted raiders square in the sternum, and exploded his torso. Blood and meat suddenly decorated a considerable section of the corridor’s white-tiled surfaces.
The other Pacter yelled something and began firing.
Gaunt ducked back behind the tank cell door as the auto fire ripped past. He felt it spank hard against the other side of the hefty door, driving it back against his body. He tried to keep it wedged open. If it slammed shut, the lock might engage, and if the lock engaged, he and Prisoner B would be trapped, and that would be the endgame.
More wild shots whacked against the door shielding him. The impacts were beginning to drive the door into him with enough force to bruise his shoulder and arm. Gaunt could hear shouting from the far end of the hall. Someone was shouting words in a hard, ugly language that he, thankfully, hadn’t heard much since Gereon.
With a curse, Gaunt kicked the door wide open and opened fire again, his bolt pistol braced in a two-handed grip. Three wailing bolt-rounds seared down the hallway, and detonated against the tiled walls, blowing clouds of tile fragments and plaster in all directions. The masked raiders, and there were three of them in sight, ducked frantically, and pulled back into the cover of the end door.
Gaunt fired another two shots with his great cannon of a pistol to keep them ducking, and turned back into the tank cell.
Prisoner B was standing right behind him.
Gaunt leapt back and brought his gun up, but Prisoner B just stood there.
“Don’t sneak up on me!” he ordered.
“I didn’t mean—” the etogaur said.
A flock of las-rounds cracked past. Gaunt winced and turned back, firing two more bolts that scattered the raiders sniping at them from the far hatchway.
“Move!” Gaunt yelled. He took off down the corridor with Prisoner B behind him. He could hear the raiders behind them shouting. What was that word?
Pheguth.
“Come on!” Gaunt yelled. Two las-bolts clipped the wall beside him, chipping the tiles.
Four metres more. A hatch on the left.
Gaunt skidded up in front of it, grabbed Prisoner B by the shoulder, and physically shoved him through the doorway out of the line of fire. He turned to fire one more hefty round at the raiders advancing along the corridor towards them, and then dived through the hatchway before he’d had time to see if he’d hit anything.
On the other side of the hatch, in the small access way adjacent to the main corridor of the interrogation unit, Prisoner B had come to a halt.
The Blood Pact soldier facing him had hesitated in surprise for a second. Now, his rifle was coming up to fire.
Gaunt fired past the etogaur’s shoulder and blew the raider’s head apart. Gore spattered across Prisoner B’s face. He didn’t flinch. He wiped it away with the back of his hand.
Gaunt slammed the hatch behind them shut, and wound the locking ring.
“Move,” he said to Prisoner B.
“Which way?”
“This way,” said Gaunt.
“Where are we going?”
“I’ll find a way out,” said Gaunt.
The raiders started beating on the other side of the locked hatch. Gaunt ejected his smoking bolt pistol’s clip. It was spent. Ten rounds. He was only carrying three spares in the pouches of his uniform belt.
“They won’t let you go,” said Prisoner B.
“Pheguth,” Gaunt replied.
“What?”
“They called you pheguth.”
“What other word would they have for me?” asked Prisoner B.
“It’s what you people called Sturm,” said Gaunt slamming a fresh load home and racking the mechanism.
“What other word would they have for either of us?” Prisoner B asked.
Gaunt shrugged.
“This way,” he said. Above the sound of the sirens, and the clamour of hammering and shouting from the other side of the hatch, he could still make out the curious keening noise. He looked back at Prisoner B.
The etogaur was looking down at the blood-soaked corpse of the raider at his feet. Specifically, he was staring at the fallen rifle.
Without any attempt at misdirection, he bent down to pick it up.
“What are you doing?” asked Gaunt.
“What?” asked
the etogaur, his pink, scarless hand about to close on the rifle’s grip.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting a weapon. Two weapons are better than one.”
“Forget it,” said Gaunt.
“We have to fight our way out.”
“I said forget it.”
“But—” Prisoner B began.
“I’m not arming you. You can forget it. I am not arming you,” said Gaunt.
The etogaur straightened up. He nodded.
“I understand,” he said.
They set off down the access way. There were sounds of fighting all around them, from the floors above them and below, and from areas nearby. They crossed over a cell bay where all the cages had gunshot-riddled corpses sprawling in them. Pistol raised, braced, Gaunt led the way.
Another hatchway took them into another long, white-tiled corridor, the trademark style of the detention levels, it seemed. There were no doors and no windows, just a long, gleaming white tunnel.
“Which way?” asked Prisoner B.
Raiders appeared down the tunnel to their right, and made the decision for them.
They started to run. As shots began to streak their way, Gaunt turned and fired, bundling Prisoner B ahead of him. He hit someone, and made the others duck back.
“Move!” Gaunt yelled.
Baltasar Eyl stepped over the bloody mess that had once been one of his men.
“Where?” he asked.
“This way, upon my soul!” Naeme declared, pointing down the hallway.
“You sure it’s him?”
“I saw him,” said Imrie.
Eyl pushed past them and started to run. He had trodden in the blood of his dead comrade, and he left bloody footprints on the white tiles.
They were coming after them. Gaunt could see them every time he looked back. They were giving chase. One of them, a big man in a beige leather coat, was leading the way, a carbine in his hands. His grotesk was silver.
The officer, Gaunt thought, the mission leader.
Shoving Prisoner B on, Gaunt turned again and fired. The screaming bolt-round barely missed the Blood Pact officer on their heels, but the man in the silver mask didn’t even flinch.
He’s sworn to this deed, Gaunt thought. He doesn’t care about his own life. He is resolute.
