the right flank and pressed ahead, hugging the ruins and the rubble. Mkoll indicated a pair of worker hab blocks ahead of them that promised to intersect the Spike’s course. Gaunt detailed his troopers into two units and sent one ahead under Gilbear, leading the other himself.
Gaunt’s troop was climbing up the stairwell of the nearer hab, five hundred paces ahead of the crawling target, when the Spike fired again. Its awesome spinal weapon, the cutting beams, howled vast energies above and past them at some target in the main hive. The sound was louder than their ears could manage. The hab shuddered thoroughly, and a harsh light-flash penetrated every crevice and opening in the stairwell for a moment. A second later there was a pop of pressure, a wall of dissipating heat and the stink of plasma.
Gaunt and his troop exchanged glances. It had been like standing too near a star for a millisecond. Their eyes ached and the energised stench burned their sinuses. Gaunt wiped a thread of blood from his lip.
There was no time to waste, however. Gaunt and Mkoll led the party up to the fifth floor, to the flats at the far end. The Spike was almost on them. Half a dozen ragged habbers fled past them, running like beaten dogs from their hideaways.
Gaunt got a signal from Gilbear in the other block. The second unit was in position. He looked out of the end window, glassless and burned, and saw how close the massive machine now was.
Its lower slopes swiped the edge of the hab block and tore it away, rubble cascading down under the tracks. Gaunt moved his soldiers back as the passing armour wall tore the end off the room they waited in. Then they moved.
In pairs and trios they leapt clear of the ripped-open building and dropped seven metres onto the sloping sides of the Spike. Most slid down the ochre-painted hull before managing to cling fast to moulding projections, rivets or weld-seams. Gaunt landed hard, slid for a moment, then braced against a row of cold-punched bolt-heads. He heard a cry from above and looked up to see Larkin slithering down the armoured slope, his hands clawing uselessly at the tarnished metal. Gaunt snagged the sniper by his stealth cape and arrested his slide, nearly throttling him with the taut fabric. Larkin found purchase and crawled up beside Gaunt.
“Saving my arse again, Ibram?” Larkin stammered in relief.
Gaunt grinned. At a time like this, he hardly minded Mad Larkin’s informality.
“You’re welcome. It’s my job.”
Ten metres down the Spike’s side, Haller also lost his grip. He slid, barking out a helpless curse and slammed into Dremmond, who was barely holding on himself. The two of them tore away and started to slide much more swiftly down the flank, thrashing for handholds.
Bragg drew his Tanith blade, punched it into the Spike’s plating to provide a firm anchor point, and caught them as they tumbled past. He captured Dremmond by the harness of his flamer, and Dremmond held tight to Haller. By then, they had barrelled into Muril—one of the scratch company loom girls—too, and Haller held on to her. Secured by one meaty fist around the hilt of his knife, Bragg supported three dangling humans.
“Feth!” he grunted, his arm shaking under the weight. “Get a grip! Get a grip! I can’t hold on much longer!”
Muril swung around and grabbed the edge of an armour plate, digging her fingertips into the seam. As soon as she was secure, Haller let go and slid down beside her. Bragg heaved the kicking Dremmond up next to him by the man’s flamer’s straps.
“Good fething catch,” Dremmond gasped, gripping tightly, trying to slow his anxious breathing.
“I don’t always miss,” replied Bragg. He didn’t dare voice his relief. For a moment, he had been close to dropping them—or being pulled away with them.
Gaunt’s unit, forty bodies, clung to the sloping side of the gigantic Zoican war machine and slowly began to climb up it. The Spike’s pyramid form was punctuated by shelflike terraces, like some step-temples of antiquity Gaunt had once seen on Fychis Dolorous. The soldiers crawled up over the lip and made themselves fast on the nearest horizontal shelf.
The progressing Spike, oblivious to the human lice now adhering to its hide, moved on and slammed over and through the hab block where Gilbear’s team was waiting. Gaunt watched in horror as the metal slopes demolished a large chunk of the hab’s lower storeys.
Then he saw Gilbear and his team leaping down from a far higher level. They’d clearly moved up a floor or two when the impact of the Spike’s course had become evident.
The troopers, led by Gilbear, dropped far further than Gaunt’s unit had done. They impacted on the hull above the shelf Gaunt and the others occupied, and most slid down onto that safe landing. Some clung on where they found purchase on the slopes above. Two—a Volpone and the Tanith scout Bonin—bounced away like rocks down a mountainside and dropped past Gaunt, disappearing a hundred metres below under the lip of the hull. Gaunt looked away. If the sheer fall hadn’t killed them outright, they were dead under the massive caterpillar carriage.
Gaunt signalled around and made contact with the remaining troopers. They were all rendezvousing on the shelf-lip. The Curtain Wall of Vervunhive was now only minutes away and their time was disappearing fast. Weapons ready, reaching out hands to steady themselves against the motion of the Spike, the strike team followed Gaunt down the shelf.
The difficult part remained: how to find a way inside this armoured monster.
The hull was solid. Domor pulled out the head of his sweeper kit and pressed it against the throbbing metal.
“Dense—no cavities,” he growled disappointedly.
Gaunt sighed. They could blast or cut the hull open if there was a chance of accessing a hollow space within, but Domor was positive. It stood to reason a machine like this would be thick-skinned.
Two of Gilbear’s Volpone returned along the shelf from scouting the far end. Gilbear heard their reports and edged along to Gaunt.
“The main weapon ports along the forward face. They’re open, ready for firing. It’s that or nothing.”
“And if they fire while we’re entering?”
“Then we’re dead. You want to stay out here for the rest of the war?”
Gaunt barked out a laugh at Gilbear’s attitude.
“No. I guess we won’t know anything about it if they fire.”
“It’ll be quick, certainly,” Gilbear agreed.
Gaunt notified the squad leaders and led the single-file team along the shelf.
They were about to make the turn onto the forward face when the beam weapons fired again. The light flash was even more brutal out in the open and the sucking roar monstrous. The whole Spike shook.
“How long since the last salvo?” Gaunt asked Larkin as soon as his ears stopped ringing.
“Eight minutes, just about, boss.”
“I’m working with the idea it takes a while for the batteries to
