Salvation's Reach

TWENTY Salvation’s Reach

‘Wait,’ whispered Mkoll. ‘Wait.’

‘It was clean,’ Larkin protested, lowering his rifle.

‘Yes,’ Mkoll agreed. He adjusted his tagger beam. ‘You hit the pin, but look.’

The beam from the chief scout’s scope lit up a fat black cable wrapped in tape running down the side of the device Larkin had just crippled.

‘Secondary trigger,’ he said.

‘Feth,’ murmured Larkin.

‘What’s it set to?’ asked Gaunt.

Domor was busy with the auspex.

‘I’m reading some kind of sack under the deck flooring there. To the right. I think it’s a compression bag. Put your weight down and it squeezes air or fluid into the trigger cable. Throne, I almost missed that.’

‘Secondary triggers suggests tighter security,’ said Gaunt.

‘We’re about a kilometre and a half inside,’ said Mkoll. ‘If our friend’s plans and memories are accurate, we’re close.’

Larkin had reloaded.

‘I can sever the cable. The trigger’s partly obscured.’

‘Do it above the trigger,’ said Domor. ‘Even if you only partly snap the line, the pressure will vent backwards out of the breach. Do it under the trigger, and the force of the shot could blow fluid or air up into the trigger anyway.’

‘Thanks for the tip,’ said Larkin, taking aim.

‘It should work,’ said Domor.

‘“Should”?’ said Zered.

‘I like to leave room for circumstantial variability,’ said Domor.

‘Yes? Go feth yourself,’ said Larkin, taking aim.

Mkoll waved Gaunt to one side.

‘Larkin’s getting tired,’ he said quietly. ‘His hands are unsteady.’

‘He’s all right,’ said Gaunt. ‘He was born unsteady.’

The rifle popped. There was a thick slap of water and glass.

‘Aaand we’re still alive,’ said Larkin.

‘He’s taken out eighteen devices so far,’ said Mkoll. ‘The sustained stress is taking its toll.’

‘We all trained for this,’ Gaunt replied.

‘And part of that training and planning involved an agreement to sub out shooters or sweepers if they started to show signs of fatigue.’

‘Sub them out for whom?’ asked Gaunt. ‘You heard what happened to Gamma. Pylar and Curo were the two reserves with lanyards, and they’ve been called in to support Daur.’

‘We’ve got other shooters.’

‘Nobody who’s trained this hard. Nobody this good. That’s why we had so many wash-outs during preparation,’ said Gaunt.

Mkoll marked off the device with red chalk. They began moving up again along the rusty vault. The walls were so corroded they looked like they were dripping in green and white ooze. They’d barely gone forty metres when Domor called in another hidden charge. Larkin began to mark it out.

Gaunt signalled to the main force advancing at a distance behind them to stop and wait.

‘Raess then, or Banda,’ said Mkoll quietly. ‘Get Criid or Mktass to break off and regroup with us.’

‘Raess and Banda have both done a dozen or so shots each,’ said Gaunt. ‘They’re no fresher than Larks. We’re committed and we’re out of options.’

Mkoll sniffed.

‘It’s your call. But I don’t think Larkin’s got more than three or four sound shots left in his finger.’

Mkoll turned to help Larkin line up. Gaunt walked back to the main force.

‘The pheguth says we’re close,’ said Rawne.

‘How close?’ asked Gaunt.

‘He recognises this corrosion. He says two or three chambers on, we’ll reach a hatchway that leads into the complex proper.’

Gaunt looked at the etogaur. Mabbon was flanked by Brostin and Varl. The rest of the S Company detail was nearby. Mabbon had been allowed to make notes on a data-slate. He showed Gaunt his sketched plan.

‘You see?’ said Mabbon. ‘We’re very close. You should get the troops ready.’

Gaunt chewed his lip.

‘How sure are you?’

‘About ninety per cent,’ said Mabbon. ‘This is a vast structure, and my memories are not perfect. But I spent several years here, and everything on this route has looked familiar. It’s been what I expected. No surprises.’

‘Ninety per cent?’ Gaunt asked.

‘Yes.’

‘If Larkin was ninety per cent accurate,’ said Gaunt, ‘we’d all be dead by now.’

‘Then it’s a good thing I’m not the one shooting out the triggers,’ said Mabbon.

There was a pop behind them, another saline round. The world did not dissolve into light and concussion. They had survived another step.

Gaunt waved up the vox.

‘This is Strike Beta, Strike Beta. I want transport ready to follow us in. The route is marked, do not deviate. Wait for my word.’

‘Understood,’ Beltayn replied. ‘I’ll signal Captain Obel.’

Gaunt turned to the long, waiting line of Ghosts that formed his fighting strength.

‘Get ready, straight silver,’ he said. ‘It seems we’re coming up on it.’

The Ghosts fixed their warknives in place.

In the Armaduke’s preparation seven hold space, they were waiting by the Tauros units when the call came through. Obel listened to the vox, nodded a few times, and handed the horn back to his operator.

‘Unload the munitions,’ he ordered. ‘These eight vehicles here. Load them with the empty carry crates. One driver, one spotter in each. Come along!’

Blenner walked over to him.

‘Orders?’

‘Strike Beta’s called in transport. They’re about to get their hands on what we’re looking for.’

Blenner nodded.

‘I’ll lead this, then,’ he said.

Obel frowned.

‘I’ve been waiting all day for a chance to–’ he began.

‘I know you have. But this is just a transport duty. In and out, lugging freight. My kind of job. I’ll use bandsmen who can drive a unit as crew.’

‘I… I would like to voice my objection,’ said Obel.

‘I hear you, I do,’ said Blenner. ‘But I outrank you in this circumstance. Look, Obel, any minute we could get the call to send active fighting reserves to the excursion deck to support Strike Alpha. Combat drop, man. That’s your kind of job. Let me take the band in to drive the cargo. That’s just grunt work. Don’t waste your time with it. Wait here for your chance to do the thing you actual heroes do.’

Obel made to reply, and then stopped.

‘I just paid you a compliment, captain,’ said Blenner.

Obel shook his head and laughed.

‘Good luck, sir,’ he said.

‘Oh, I won’t need that,’ said Blenner.

Blenner walked over to Wilder. His heart was pumping harder than he really liked.

‘Time for work, captain,’ he said.

Wilder looked at him.

‘Really? Another munition restock?’

‘No, something much more stimulating. We’re going in to support Gaunt. Select eight drivers and five spotters.’

‘Five?’ asked Wilder.

‘The others will be you, me and the boy there.’

‘Shit, commissar!’ Wilder hissed. ‘Gaunt’s son? Really?’

‘He needs to do something before his confidence withers and dies entirely,’ said Blenner.

‘Come on now!’ he called to the bandsmen. ‘Let’s look like we know what we’re doing. Perday? You’ll be my driver.’

Felyx approached him.

‘You want me for this?’

‘It’s just a little trip. You’ll enjoy it. Something to do, Meritous.’

‘I’ll ride along,’ said Maddalena.

‘There’s no room, so you can’t. Sorry and all that. I’ll bring him back in one piece. Promise.’

‘No,’ said Maddalena.

‘Yes!’ Felyx exclaimed.

‘You are bound by Imperial Guard law,’ Blenner told her. ‘It was a basic condition of you remaining with this regiment. I know that as a fact. So I have authority and I’m exercising it. Go away. Let the boy do something today so that when it’s all over he can look his father in the face without feeling ashamed.’

Maddalena Darebeloved stared at him. Her jaw was tight.

‘I do not like you, Vaynom Blenner,’ she said.

‘They all say that at first,’ he replied. He stared right back at her. ‘My dear mamzel, if I worried about all the things in this fething galaxy that didn’t like me, I’d never get out of bed in the morning.’

He turned away.

‘Shall we go?’ he asked.

Criid shone her lamp pack into the darkness overhead. Her clearance team had entered a vast cavern that seemed to be a natural formation because time and compression had crumpled the walls and ceiling so much. Micas and alloys glittered and wrinkled like rock. The deck beneath their feet was rusting plates forming a path across oil-stained rockcrete surfacing.

‘Hold up,’ Mklaek called out. He tuned the dial of his sweeper. ‘It’s mined,’ he said. ‘Under the floor plates.’

Banda wiped sweat from her forehead.

‘Great,’ she said. ‘How do I shoot out the trigger, then?’

‘Can we lift the plates up?’ asked Leyr. ‘Disable the mines manually?’

‘That sounds like a gigantically bad idea,’ said Criid.

‘We go around then,’ said Leyr. ‘Off the path, onto the rockcrete.’

Mklaek shook his head.

‘I’m getting nothing at all off the rockcrete. Too dense for a clear return. There could be filament charges or remote triggers that I’m just not picking up.’

Criid breathed deeply.

‘So we find another way,’ said Chiria, easing the weight of her flamer pack. ‘Go back to that last junction, take the other spur.’

Banda put down her rifle and leaned against the cavern wall. She was trying to regulate her stress.

‘Listen,’ she said. ‘You never mine an area you can’t disarm. That’s a scratch company basic rule.’

‘That’s not always true,’ said Leyr.

Banda shrugged. ‘All right. Maybe not on an open world where you’ve got the luxury of space. Space to go around. Space to detonate from a distance. But not here.’

She looked at Criid.

‘Think about it, Tona,’ she said. ‘They wouldn’t wire up a main route like this if they couldn’t unwire it again later. In case they needed to. It stands to reason. They couldn’t set this off safely to clear it. The concussion would blow right through the tunnels.’

Criid thought about it.

‘Which means,’ said Banda, ‘these charges must be defusable. We can lift the plates.’

Mklaek nodded eagerly. ‘Because they won’t have pressure releases,’ he said. ‘They won’t be triggered by weight coming off them. Just weight being applied.’

‘Can you do it?’ asked Criid.

Mklaek nodded again.

‘It’ll make a change from taking pot shots,’ said Banda.

Criid looked at Chiria. ‘Go back to the troop support and get them to back off at least fifty metres,’ she said.

‘That won’t do any good if we set this off,’ Chiria objected.

‘It’ll make me feel better,’ snapped Criid. She looked at Banda and Mkleak.

‘You’re up,’ she said.

They put on gloves and got down on their hands and knees. Mklaek slid the sweeper set alongside him as they crawled along, keeping an eye on the auspex unit.

‘This is the first one,’ he said, halting.

Criid and Leyr stood watching, intent.

Banda drew her warknife and fitted the tip of the blade under the edge of the corroded deck plate.

‘Steady,’ said Mklaek.

‘Really?’ Banda replied. ‘I was just going to flip it up.’

Mklaek got right down so the side of his head was on the ground. The moment the plate lifted, even a finger width or less, he could see under it.

‘Do it,’ he said.

Banda began to lever up the edge of the plate. It was thick and very heavy, and the knife blade was polished so finely the plate looked in danger of slipping off it. She prised the edge of the plate up about two centimetres, and very quickly got three fingers under it before it fell back onto the pressure trigger.

‘Throne alive,’ muttered Leyr to Criid. ‘I can’t bear this.’

Banda swallowed, adjusted her grip, and slid the knife out. Mklaek still had his head pressed to the ground.

‘Ready?’ she asked.

He nodded.

She started to lift. It was heavy. She wouldn’t be able to hold it for very long.

‘Stop,’ said Mklaek.

‘What?’ Banda asked. The plate was no more than three centimetres clear on the side she was lifting.

‘Don’t move it any higher,’ said Mklaek.

‘Oh right, just sit here? Holding it?’

‘The underside is wired,’ said Mklaek quietly. ‘It’s got a pull-away wire hooked to the trigger cap. Lift it any higher and it’ll fire.’

‘Now you tell me,’ said Banda.

Raess took a sip of water from his flask. His throat was as dry as Jago. There was a soreness in his right arm that he didn’t like.

‘Fit?’ asked Mktass.

‘I’ll do,’ said Raess. He stoppered his flask, put it away, and got up. ‘Where is it?’

Mktass’s team had advanced into another engine room, a giant, rusting metal box full of rusting metal machines. It was the third in a row that they had slowly picked their way across. Preed speculated that they were all parts of a ship, a shiftship, that had been compacted into the mass of Salvation’s Reach centuries before. It reminded them of the corroding, jury-rigged hulks the greenskins used. Every surface was a drab, flaking autumnal shade of rust.

They were coming out on a gantry halfway up the height of the chamber. The gantry became a metal bridge that stretched out to a hatch on the far side. Support was from metal bars that descended from the ceiling. It was a long way up and a long way down.

Brennan had swept the chamber and located an electrical source on the bridge, halfway along. The central span was wired up to pressure plates under the approach span. A major charge lurked under the bridge, secured in a fuel barrel and lagged with swathes of oilskin sheet.

Raess chambered a round. He had officially lost count of how many shots he’d taken that day.

‘Line me up,’ he told Preed.

The scout took out his scope and put the tagger beam on the trigger mechanism, which stuck out of the bundle under the bridge like a spigot.

‘Got it?’ Preed asked.

‘Yes,’ said Raess, setting his rifle scope.

Mktass waited behind them, with Sairus. Sairus had turned his flame unit right down to the slowest rate. Mktass glanced back to the troop element, waiting a hundred metres back down the corridor. The Belladon sergeant, Gorlander, at the head of the column, shot Mktass a quick nod.

Brennan edged forwards beside the shooting team and swept again. Just his weight and movement on the gantry made it stir and creak.

‘Feth!’ Mktass breathed.

Small scabs of rust fluttered down from the pins supporting the structural bars. Most of them billowed away like dead leaves. Preed gently caught one of the largest before it could land on the wired bridge span. He was pretty sure it would have been too slight to activate the pressure plate, but there was no sense tempting fate.

‘Take your shot, please,’ said Mktass.

Raess lined up.

‘Wait,’ said Brennan. His scope was showing something else. ‘There’s a second charge at the other end of the bridge. It’s wired up to the same pressure pads as the first.’

‘Feth,’ Raess whispered.

‘What do we do?’ asked Preed.

Brennan took a deep breath, thinking.

‘Take out the first as you were,’ he said. ‘Reload fast, take out the second. In between times, pray that the impact of the first shot doesn’t throw the second trigger.’

Raess took out a second saline round and stood it on its brass base beside his knee.

‘Line up both shots in advance,’ he told Preed. ‘We’ll plug both sets of range parameters into our scopes so I can take the shot, load and switch to the second.’

Preed nodded.

Raess’s palms were sweating.

The blast hatch was scarred and coated with dust, but it held power. Mkoll touched the release and raised his weapon as it whirred open.

Silence.

He took a step forwards, weapon still aimed. Bonin and Ezra were by his side, with Brostin just behind them.

Mkoll felt warmth on his face. Heated air, circulating, an atmospheric pump. There were pendant lights in wire cages hanging from the brushed metal ceiling of the hallway. Some were lit. Some were dead.

He stepped through the hatch. The hallway was ribbed. The wall panels, battered old slab-cut metal sheets, had been painted with crude yellow symbols that made him feel uneasy. He could smell foul biological waste, oil and heated metal. He could hear a generator chugging close by, and deeper more faraway sounds of major machines at work. Patches of the floor were scorched as if fires had been lit and left to go out. Piles of discarded junk, unidentifiable fragments of rubber and metal salvage, were heaped in the corners.

Bonin edged down to the first junction. Ezra checked the nearest doors. The metal swing doors opened into little stone cells, like a jail without locks, sleeping quarters, monastically simple and spare. There were dozens of them, and then others above them, accessed by makeshift metal ladders, and others above that; a honeycomb of cells that stretched away into the darkness of the roof space.

They advanced a little further. Gaunt had followed them through, trailed by Rawne and Varl and the pheguth.

Gaunt shot Mabbon a look. The etogaur nodded and pointed ahead.

Gaunt holstered his pistol and drew his sword. He signed for silent approach. The Ghosts slung their rifles over their shoulders and drew their blades.

Two figures emerged from a hatchway up ahead of them. They were soldiers in brown leather webbing and yellow coats. Sons of Sek. They paused to mutter at each other. They turned to head in different directions. Mkoll took one down with his knife, cradling the corpse all the way to the deck. Ezra put a reynbow quarrel through the spine of the other.

Gaunt approached and glanced at the bodies as Bonin checked the hatch the enemy troops had emerged from.

The Sons were big and corded with muscle built from punishing training regimes. They stank of spices and dust. Their uniforms were bleached faded Guard surplus, patched up and dyed yellow. The belts and leatherwork they wore were finely made and polished. Their weapons were freshly stamped lasrifles, probably from some hijacked forge world shipment heading for the front line.

The masks were curious, the helmet chinstraps ornately broadened to cover the mouth with a life-sized simulacrum of a human hand.

Gaunt looked again, more closely. The leather hand had fingernails. It wasn’t a simulacrum. The ornate boots, belts, straps and other leatherwork worn by the Sons was tanned and cured from skinned victims or enemies.

Gaunt got up, and they moved on. The chambers felt like crypts. Wall paint was flaking and only half the light sources worked. There was a litter of junk and signs of scorching everywhere. Somehow, Gaunt had been imagining something more organised, something less like a slum or a derelict hive-hab occupied by vagrants.

All the metal surfaces flaked with rust, scabs of brown and black and yellow. Old wire braziers fluttered with open fires. Wires hung down from the galvanised metal ceiling frame.

They crossed a broad area like an open yard that was piled almost knee-deep with old, worn, faded and discarded rebreather masks. The cracked eye-slits seemed to stare at them. Then there was another bank of monastic cells, climbing like a cliff-face into the mangled junk vault of the chamber. A hatch opened into another hall. The space was filled with huge zinc baths, glass sinks, glass flagons and metal cooking pots. They were placed side by side on the floor, as if they had been arranged to catch drips from a leaking roof. All of the vessels, large or small, were filled to a greater or lesser extent with blood. The stink was terrible. Much of the blood was old, decomposing, clotted with rafts of mould and decay. Some of it seemed fresh.

Beyond that there were more of the monastic cells.

Leading the way, Bonin, Mkoll and Eszrah had silenced two more Sons along with some kind of robed official who was dressed like a hierophant. This creature’s malnourished, pallid form, replete with tattoos, was wrapped in a crude wire-and-metal armature under his robes, a frame that seemed designed either to support him or torture him. The joints had chafed and cut his flesh. The frame reminded Gaunt a little of the wirewolves of Gereon.

Gaunt glanced at Mabbon, quizzical.

A weaponwright, Mabbon wrote on his data-slate. Mabbon had told Gaunt that the weaponwrights were a fraternity of technical adepts who operated the Reach manufactories and had served the malign Heritor, Asphodel. They would now be serving a new Heritor, enabling him to function as Sek’s principal arms provider. Their prowess was likened to the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus, though they relied far less on augmetic body modification and far more on esoteric and forbidden lore.

Gaunt nodded. He checked behind him. The troop element was advancing into the active section at their heels. Mkoll had made sure that the bodies of the Ghosts’ kills were dragged out of sight and thrown in the cells.

Mkoll signalled. He and the scouts fanned out.

‘These cells are where the weaponwrights rest and meditate,’ Mabbon whispered to Gaunt. ‘We are remarkably close to one of the main colleges. The colleges of heritence.’

‘The manufactories?’ Gaunt whispered back.

‘Yes, but more like labs,’ said Mabbon.

Mkoll returned.

‘There is a suite of chambers up ahead,’ he reported. ‘An extensive complex. Bad light in there, a weird light. There are people at work, men like the one in the robes. Servitors too, but not like any I’ve seen. There’s stuff there. Benches of it, shelves, alcoves. I saw artifacts, books, charts, data-slates.’

‘That’s the target,’ Gaunt replied. ‘Decide the order of attack. We need this to be discreet.’

‘We’ll never do it silently,’ said Mkoll.

‘Quietly, then, and quickly.’ He looked back at Mabbon. ‘Will there be defences? Things that we can’t handle?’

Mabbon shook his head.

‘Some of the things the weaponwrights craft here are so volatile they have to be kept inert for fear of inter-reaction. The Reach’s principal defence has always been its inaccessibility.’

Gaunt looked over at Mkoll. The chief scout had finished briefing the men. He gave Gaunt the nod.

Gaunt signed execute.

Three prongs moved forwards, fast and quiet. Mkoll led one, Rawne the second and Bonin the third. They ran down a long, paved hallway with towering walls the colour of mud, and under the broken stained glass dome of a large circular chamber that rivalled many temples. The floor was littered with fire-burns and blackened rubbish. This area of the Reach had been deliberately designed and constructed. Compartments and rooms had been cut and dressed with stone, decks had been paved or bound in iron. On the walls, strange murals had been painted: abnormal views that were barely intelligible and curiously disturbing. They seemed to be views of alien landscapes or records of macabre ritual ceremonies. Gaunt felt as if they were invading a cathedral precinct, a cathedral precinct that smelled like a library and a machine shop and a latrine and that had been buried deep underground, lit by the ruddy glow of simmering lava.

The college of heritence was a trio of long, high halls, linked end to end, with a series of side chapels and annexes to either side. Its floor was hammered copper, and its walls were carved ivory inlaid with silver threads and bio-organic mechanisms. Strange objects stood in alcoves or on bench consoles. There were shelves of books and data-slates. Some of them had been chained down or welded shut. A vast and ornately carved bank of wooden pigeonholes along one wall contained millions of hand-numbered scrolls. Larger devices, some partly disassembled, lay in the side bays and machine-shop chambers, shrouded by mirror-glass screens and silk canopies. The copper floor was blanketed with junk and salvage, like a garbage dump.

The Ghosts rushed the area, entering from three sides. A weaponwright, his head braced and held painfully erect in a frame of wire and brass, lifted his gaze from the cogitator he was dismantling at a bench and looked at them. His fingers had been amputated and tools implanted in their place. Machine oil trickled out of the corner of his mouth.

‘Voi shet jadhoj’k?’ he asked, perplexed by the appearance of people he didn’t recognise.

Mkoll put his dagger through the wretch’s heart.

Other weaponwrights nearby, looking up from their study or delicate manufacture, were killed quickly with blades. Others got up, and made to run or cry out. The first shots were fired: quick bursts of las that cut robed figures down. Bonin hit one who fell and overturned his work bench. Delicate wirework creations, glassware and brass instruments crashed onto the copper floor. The acolytes and servitors assisting the weaponwrights were distressing confections of machine skeleton and grafted human meat, fused through an amalgam of augmetics and artificial tissue. The Ghosts shot them too. They died with shrill, squealing cries. Some tried to scurry away or raise the alarm. They fled in every possible direction through the long, bizarre halls of the college.

Strike Beta was thorough.

Several Sons of Sek appeared at the far end of the first hall, disturbed by the cries. Varl killed one, and Cardass clipped and then finished a second before serious gunplay could begin. A third ran for cover and began to return fire. His head vanished in a pink mist.

Larkin had made the shot from the main entry. He hadn’t even had time to take out his longlas and put away his rifle. He had simply slotted a hard round into the old gun’s breech. Forty-three metres, a target moving into partial concealment.

‘Who says I’m tired?’ he muttered.

Inside five minutes, the Ghosts had the college area secure.

‘They will now know we’re here,’ said Mabbon.

‘Of course,’ Gaunt noted.

‘Simply from the cessation of activity and processed data,’ Mabbon added. ‘But with the primary raid going on, I’d say we have half an hour before they properly realise they have a second crisis on their hands.’

‘Let’s get to work,’ said Gaunt. ‘Mkoll, bring the transports up as close as they can come. Bring the empty crates in. Two squads. Rawne, set up a perimeter. Etogaur, tell us what to take, and how it should be correctly handled. The rest of it we burn. Then we get the feth out.’

‘But we do burn it?’ Brostin asked.

Gaunt nodded.

‘Just checking,’ said Brostin.

The eight Tauros vehicles rumbled into lateral sixteen and drove through the bore hole into the Reach.

Inside, the rate was slower. They were following the route that Mkoll had marked out, picking up his chalk marks with their headlamps. The ship’s artificers had moved in after the troops and cleared some areas, but space was still tight in places. Where devices had been secured, the drivers had to use extra care not to snag or disturb the packed explosives.

Blenner rode in the first Tauros. He felt the sweat on his back, smelled cold air and exhaust fumes. It was times like this, he thought to himself, when a bottle of sugar pill placebos just didn’t cut it. Where was that nice medicae Curth when you needed her?

‘Easy, easy,’ he urged Perday. Her hands were clenched on the wheel, her eyes wide with concentration and tension.

Two vehicles back, Felyx held onto the cabin cage with one hand and cradled his lasrifle in the other. The empty carry crates rattled in the back of the vehicle.

He was actually doing something, for the first time in his life. He was engaged in an activity that could lead anywhere, and that his mother couldn’t absolutely control with her power and money.

Now it was happening, he wasn’t sure exactly what he thought of it.

‘My arm’s too big,’ said Mklaek.

‘That’s fantastic,’ Banda replied through gritted teeth. Sweat was beading her face. Her arms were beginning to shake through the strain. ‘I can’t hold this much longer, and I can’t lift it any higher.’

‘I just can’t get my arm in under the plate far enough to reach the wire,’ said Mklaek. He looked at Criid. There was panic in his eyes.

Criid got down on her knees beside Banda, pulled off her gloves and rolled her left sleeve up. Her arm was more slender than Mklaek’s. She had a better chance than either Leyr or Chiria.

‘What do I do?’ she asked, gently sliding her hand in under the heavy metal plate.

‘Find the wires,’ said Mklaek, ‘without pulling them out. Gently.’ His hands were bunched tightly together, fingers interlocked, as if he was praying all the while he watched her.

‘Go really slowly,’ he implored her.

‘I am going really slowly,’ Criid replied, reaching further.

‘Not too slowly,’ Banda grunted. ‘I can’t do slowly.’

‘Holy feth,’ Leyr said to Chiria.

‘I can’t look,’ said Chiria.

‘I’ve got them. I’ve got wires!’ Criid said. There was no way to reach in and see what she was doing at the same time. She was groping under the metal slab blind.

‘All right,’ said Mklaek, nodding. ‘Trace them up to the slab. Up. Do it really gently. You do not want to pull anything out by accident.’

‘All right,’ said Criid. She bit her lower lip in concentration.

‘Don’t follow the wires back to the firing cap,’ said Mklaek. ‘Go up.’

‘Yes, I understand what “up” means!’ Criid said.

‘Do any of you understand what “quickly” means?’ Banda gasped.

‘I’ve got the wire,’ said Criid. ‘I’ve got it at the top, where it meets the plate.’

‘Is it soldered?’ Mklaek asked.

‘No, it’s wound onto a metal terminal.’

‘All right. Good. So, without pulling it, unwind the wire and detach it.’

Staring at the deck, her arm in the hole, Criid grimaced. ‘That’s easier said than done. I can’t get hold of the end.’

‘When we’re done here,’ murmured Banda, ‘I’ve decided to kill everybody.’

‘If we don’t do this right,’ said Mklaek, ‘that won’t be necessary.’

‘I’ve got it,’ Criid said. ‘I’ve picked the strands loose. Wait. Wait…’

She looked at them.

‘It’s off,’ she said.

‘Are there any other wires?’ Mklaek asked.

‘Oh, what?’ cried Banda.

Criid gingerly felt around.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, there’s– wait. No. No other wires.’

‘Then we lift it off,’ said Mklaek.

Criid drew her arm out. She and Mklaek got their fingers under the plate beside Banda.

‘On three,’ said Criid.

‘Three,’ said Banda.

They lifted.

As it came away, the deck plate exposed a dull grey anti-tank mine buried in soil beneath. A wire trailed from the pressure pin on the top.

They put the plate down on the path beside the hole.

‘I have to make it safe,’ said Mklaek, taking out a pair of pliers and kneeling beside the mine.

‘I do not want to do that again,’ said Criid.

Raess fired. The shot was perfect. The saline charge blew the firing cap assembly out of the device under the bridge span.

But the recoil also made the gantry shiver unpleasantly.

Preed lined the tagger up on the second trigger cap quickly. Raess scooped the waiting round up off the deck beside him and reloaded.

He reset his scope and locked on the point that Preed was tagging. His finger curled around the trigger, ready to squeeze.

Small flakes of rusty metal trickled down from overhead, disturbed by the recoil. Mktass caught one before it landed.

A second, no bigger than a rose petal, landed on the first span of the bridge.

‘Oh f–’ Mktass began.

The pressure switch clicked. The second charge, at the far end of the bridge, blew.

The force of the detonation instantly shredded the entire length of the bridge into rust particles and ignited the first charge. The combined blast lit the chamber like a supernova.

Mktass, Preed, Sairus, Brennan and Raess were simply atomised. Concussive pressure split the chamber walls and forced a titanic shockwave back down the access tunnel. The pressure blast liquidised Sergeant Gorlander and the troop element waiting in the passageway behind them.

The rushing, sucking fireball that squirted up the tunnel incinerated the pulped remains a millisecond later.