THE WARMASTER

by Dan Abnett

  Criid glanced at the billet, and reflected that it probably had lice of its own.

  ‘They’re going to die, Mumma,’ Yoncy said.

  ‘Who are, sweet?’ Criid asked.

  Yoncy pointed through the rusty links at the figures kicking the ball around.

  ‘Them soldiers,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Criid asked.

  ‘They’re soldiers,’ said Yoncy. ‘Soldiers all die.’

  ‘Not all soldiers,’ Criid assured her, and gave her an encouraging hug.

  Yoncy seemed to think about that. The hem of her little dress shivered in the breeze.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘but those ones will.’

  ‘Let’s get you inside,’ Criid said. ‘Juniper will wonder where you are.’

  There was a sound like a twig snapping.

  Criid looked around. It had been a high, distinctive sound above the murmur of the regiment behind her.

  She looked back at the soldiers in the distance. They’d stopped their game. Some were looking around as if they’d lost the ball. Two had run over to a man who’d clearly been brought down by an overenthusiastic tackle.

  ‘He fell down, Mumma,’ said Yoncy.

  There was another crack. This time, Criid saw the man go over. He’d been standing over the man on the ground, shouting something. She saw the puff of red as he twitched and fell.

  Criid turned and yelled.

  ‘Shooter! Shooter!’

  FOURTEEN: LINE OF FIRE

  Ban Daur turned. He’d heard someone shouting. There was a lot of noise around him, the chatter of off-duty ease, but this had been fiercer. Urgent.

  He turned and looked. He saw Tona running towards him from the fence line. She was carrying Yoncy in her arms.

  What the gak was she shouting?

  He saw her mouth move. He read her lips.

  ‘Shooter!’ Daur yelled. ‘Shooter! Shooter! Get to cover now!’

  The off-loading personnel around him scattered. Several took up the cry. Daur saw people ducking behind trucks and cargo loads, or fleeing through the doorways of the hab units. Panic, mayhem, like a pot of ball bearings poured onto a hard floor spinning in all directions. Children started to cry as the retinue womenfolk snatched them up and ran with them.

  Tona reached him. Daur’s rifle was still in the truck, but he’d drawn his sidearm.

  ‘Where is he?’ Daur asked.

  ‘Feth knows,’ Criid snapped. ‘He’s looping kill-shots into the yard next door. Two of those Helixid boys are down, at least.’

  ‘Medic!’ Daur yelled.

  ‘Don’t be mad!’ Criid snarled at him. ‘No one’s going to make it across to them alive. It’s wide open!’

  Daur heard a snap-crack. No mistaking that. Distant, though. Where the gak was it coming from?

  Mkoll ran up, pushing through the last of the stragglers jostling to get through the hab doorway. There were people prone all around the yard and the approach track, down in the dirt or cowering behind cover. Some troopers were scrambling in the back of trucks for their weapons.

  ‘Angle?’ Mkoll asked directly, unshipping his rifle.

  ‘Not clear,’ said Criid. She was struggling with Yoncy. The child was sobbing and squirming. ‘East side, towards the old ruin.’

  She pointed towards the derelict cement works.

  Mkoll tapped his microbead.

  ‘East side,’ he said. ‘Past the access track.’

  At the end of the yard, near the mouth of the track, someone opened up. A burst of auto.

  ‘What the feth?’ Mkoll snarled. He started to run in that direction, across the open yard. Major Pasha, Mklure and Domor broke into a sprint after him.

  ‘Ban!’ said Criid. ‘Can you take Yoncy? Get her inside?’

  Daur looked at her. She had her rifle looped over her left shoulder, and that was going to be a lot more useful than his sidearm. He took the child from her. She was surprisingly heavy. He felt the effort strain painfully at his freshly healed wounds.

  ‘Go with Uncle Ban,’ Criid said, and ran off across the yard.

  ‘Come on, Yonce,’ Daur said, his arms around the kid. ‘Come inside with me.’

  She was crying and thrashing. What was that she was saying, over and over?

  Bad shadow?

  ‘Make room!’ Daur yelled. People packed the doorway. He had to force his way in.

  Mkoll reached the trucks parked along the end of the yard, and slid into cover with men from E Company. Didi Gendler was on his feet at the end of one truck. He let off another burst of full auto. Las-bolts swooped and spat across the vacant lot.

  ‘Cease that!’ Mkoll yelled.

  ‘I can see the bastard,’ Gendler replied, taking aim again.

  ‘Didi reckons he can see him,’ Meryn said, sidelong to Mkoll.

  ‘He’s a fething idiot,’ Mkoll said to Meryn. He looked past him at the E Company sergeant.

  ‘Gendler, stop fething shooting!’ he yelled.

  Gendler paused, and glanced back. His face was flushed pink and sweaty.

  ‘He’s in the cement works,’ he hissed.

  ‘We can’t fething track him if we can’t hear him,’ Banda said. She was crouching behind the rear wheels, stripping her long-las out of its weather-case.

  ‘We need to be able to hear,’ Mkoll said very firmly.

  Pasha, Mklure and Domor dropped in beside them.

  Everyone listened. The only sound was the hiss of the breeze, the wailing of startled children and the murmur of everyone in cover.

  There was a muffled crack.

  ‘Cement works. High up,’ said Banda. Mkoll nodded.

  ‘I damn well said so,’ said Gendler.

  ‘Get your mouth shut tight,’ Domor told him.

  Banda wriggled up for a look. She ran her long-las out over the rear fender and snapped in a cell.

  ‘Firing away from us,’ said Pasha quietly. ‘Firing down at the other habs, not us. The wind’s cupping it.’

  Banda bit her lip and nodded. Major Pasha had been scratch company. She was an old hand at reading the sound-prints of gunfire in an urban environment.

  Larkin and Criid ran up and dropped in beside Mkoll. Larkin had his long-las.

  Mkoll signalled the old marksman to go up and around the front of the truck. Larkin nodded, and made his way on his hands and knees. Banda was hunting through her scope, moving her mag-sight from one blown-out window of the cement works to the next.

  ‘No movement,’ she whispered.

  ‘Fether’s probably upped and gone now,’ mumbled Larkin from the far end. ‘Opportunist. His job’s done for the day.’

  Mkoll shook his head.

  ‘We’d have seen him move. That’s open ground all the way to the wire.’

  ‘So we flush the fether out,’ said Gendler. He got off his haunches and sprayed another burst of fire over the engine cowling of the cargo-8.

  ‘I’m going to fething gut you,’ said Domor, slamming Gendler against the truck’s side panels.

  ‘Get off him,’ barked Meryn, grabbing Domor’s arm. ‘Get the feth off!’

  ‘Shut the feth up!’ said Mkoll.

  The cab window beside him blew out in a flurry of lucite. Another shot spanked through the truck’s canvas cover. Everyone huddled hard.

  ‘You feth-bag shit,’ Domor said, his hands clamping Gendler’s throat to keep him pinned. ‘You’ve got his attention. Now we’re the target!’

  Three more shots tore into the cargo-8 sheltering them, and the one beside it. Larkin swore and ducked. A pool driver nearby squealed as shards of glass punctured his cheek and eyelid. Criid and Meryn dragged the man into cover under a wheel-well. He was bleeding profusely.

  ‘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 c
over.

  ‘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.

  Criid immediately took Zhukova’s place, and hoisted the Verghast captain with her cupped hands. Mkoll grabbed Zhukova’s outstretched arms, and dragged her onto the roof beside him.

  Keeping low, they looked around. The sloped roof led up to the lower main ro
of, which was flat and littered with the rusty wreckage of toppled vox-masts. Beyond that, there was a row of glassless windows. Mkoll pointed, and Zhukova nodded. She turned to look back at Criid, hoping to reach down and pull her up, but Criid had already moved around the corner of the block, looking for another way up.

  Mkoll and Zhukova crawled up the slope towards the windows.

  At the right-hand end of the building, Vivvo and Nessa shouldered open a rotting door, and slipped into the fabricatory’s interior. It was a vast, dark space, crammed with junk, lit only by the daylight that shafted in through holes in the roof. The floor was thick with birdlime, and old, galvanic generators, rusted solid, loomed like parked vehicles. Nessa got her long-las to her shoulder, and started to pan around the roof. Vivvo guided her forwards, his lasrifle ready at his chest.

  They edged through a half-open sliding shutter into a larger space. More rubble, more burned-out machine units. The roof was partly glazed, and the glass was filthy and fogged. Their entry scared up a flock of roosting birds that broke in a rush, and began to circle and mob around the rafters. The movement made Nessa start, but she eased her finger off the trigger the moment she saw what it was. Vivvo could hear the dull thump of shots from above them. He knew Nessa couldn’t, but he signed to her, and indicated direction. She nodded. They stalked forwards a little further.

  Another shot. Vivvo swung his head around, scanning the ceiling. Another shot, then another. This time, he saw the brief flash reflection on the dirty glass high above him. He pointed. They could just make out a heavy chimney assembly on the midline of the roof, through the filth coating the cracked windows. Was that a vent or…?

  No, a figure, huddled down in position against the chimney block.

  Nessa grabbed Vivvo, steering him until he was facing the distant shape. She rested her long-las across his right shoulder, using him as a prop, and crouched a little to improve her angle. Vivvo turned his head away, and plugged his right ear with his finger.

  Nessa fired. One shot. A panel of glass blew out far above them, raining chips of glass down. A second later, the entire roof section collapsed, panes of glass and frame struts alike, as a body crashed down through it.