of fire too heavy for me to be able to risk popping out to take a crack at him.
Abruptly the firing ceased, and I seized the opportunity the momentary lull presented, lunging out to the side as I stood, my chainsword swinging to meet the anticipated charge, while my laspistol sought a target. To my surprise, however, he was already down, flat out on the rubble-strewn floor, deader than Horus. I approached the corpse warily, anticipating some kind of trick, but as I got closer I could see that the back of his head was missing, taken out by another las-bolt. From the angle of the wound, it had clearly come from somewhere down below, outside the building.
I edged cautiously to the brink of the drop and glanced down. Mira was still crouched in the lee of the burned-out Chimera, her lasgun raised and pointing in my direction. Seeing me, she lowered the weapon and waved, in a manner which, even at that distance, struck me as distinctly pleased with herself. Hard to resent that under the circumstances, though, so I returned the wave and turned back to the bodies of the late sentries. Neither had any vox gear on him, or anything else which might have provided some useful intelligence come to that, so I started to head back towards the stairs, intent on nothing more than getting back down the hole and out of sight before anyone got around to missing them.
I'd barely gone a pace or two, though, before the air seemed to thicken around me, the hairs on my arms bristling as if a thunderstorm was building, and a remarkably unpleasant sensation of pressure began to grow behind my eyes. It felt as if my sinuses were being packed with rockcrete, and I stumbled, my vision blurring. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the feeling ended, leaving me almost giddy with relief.
I hurried back to the hole in the wall, looking outside, anxiously, just as a rumble of displaced air echoed between the buildings, like one of the distant explosions where the crew of the Thunderhawk were continuing to amuse themselves. The rebel artillery park was in a state of complete confusion, with people running everywhere, like rats in a room when someone turns on the lights, and as the firing started, I began to see why. Towering figures in white and yellow armour were plodding unhurriedly through the pandemonium, shrugging off the las-bolts and occasional grenade sleeting in their direction with magnificent disdain. They were larger and bulkier than the Astartes I'd seen before; although I was to become familiar with it later, this was the first time I'd ever seen Terminator armour in action, apart from a handful of seconds aboard the necron vessel before losing consciousness. Most of the Astartes wearing it seemed to be carrying twin-barrelled bolters, which put out a staggering amount of firepower, ripping all traces of resistance to shreds with contemptuous ease, and one had a pair of missile pods mounted above his shoulders.
As I watched, the Terminator fired one from each, taking out a Basilisk which had started to move away in an explosion which knocked many of the defenders from their feet, but left the Astartes striding grimly forwards, apparently unmoved. Another of his fellows approached the nearest artillery piece and began literally tearing it apart, the long metal claws attached to his gauntlets shearing through the thick metal as though it was no more substantial than mist and shadows, a faint nimbus of arcane energies crackling about them.[18]
Panic-stricken crewmen bailed from it and ran in random directions, desperate to get away before those formidable talons found purchase in flesh.
Tearing my eyes reluctantly away from the spectacle, because it's not often I get so close to a battle without someone diverting my attention by trying to kill me, I glanced down to make sure Mira was all right. As it happened she was looking distinctly apprehensive, and who could blame her; apart from the disconcerting effect of being caught in the fringes of a teleport field, she'd be hearing all the noise without a clue as to what was going on. Catching her eye, I waved, as nonchalantly as I could manage, and started back down the stairs to reassure her. After all, annoying brat or not, she had just saved my life, which was always welcome, and she was considerably more decorative than Jurgen, whose job that usually was.
'What's going on?' she demanded, the minute I came within earshot.
'The Space Marines are taking out the artillery for us,' I told her, trying not to sound too pleased about it. 'That headache a few minutes ago was a bunch of Terminators teleporting in.' Which seemed a bit like overkill, given that a combat squad of ordinary Astartes could have taken out the rebels without breaking sweat, but only the Terminators had the training and experience to deploy by teleporter. A thought struck me, and I nodded in sudden understanding. 'No wonder Gries wanted the vox link kept open. They must have used it as a homing beacon.'
'Then we need to get the men up here,' she said, turning towards the manhole we'd first emerged from. 'The Astartes might need some backup.'
'I doubt it,' I said, keeping the relief from my voice with an effort. It could just have been the bulk of the intervening building, but it sounded to me like the firing was already reducing in both intensity and volume. 'But you're right about getting back under cover as fast as we can.' If I'd read the situation right, the few remaining rebels would give up trying to make a fight of it and start fleeing for their lives at any moment now, and that would be a bad time to get caught in the open. I fully expected Mira to argue about that, as she seemed to do more or less by reflex every time I tried to get her to be sensible, but if she was about to she never got the chance. Instead, she crouched behind the wrecked Chimera and raised her lasgun.
'Too late,' she said.
FIVE
A QUICK GLANCE round the Chimera's hull was all it took to confirm that Mira was right: there was no way we could get back to the tunnels now without being spotted. A full squad of rebel infantry, still wearing the remains of their old PDF uniforms, embellished by some paintstick scrawl in place of the unit patches which had been ripped away from the sleeves, was deploying further up the road in skirmish order. As I watched them come, the palms of my hands started to itch. Though I couldn't quite put my finger on it yet, something wasn't right.
'There are more up there,' Mira said, swinging her lasgun in the direction of the upper floor I'd been observing the enemy from, and where I'd left the two dead sentries a few moments before. She was rewarded by a flicker of movement, as whoever it was ducked back out of sight with almost indecent haste.
'Frak!' I said, heedless of the fact that there was a lady present. We'd be dead meat if anyone started shooting at us from up there, and even though Mira had picked off one man from this distance, I didn't imagine for a moment that she'd be able to repeat the trick with las-bolts bursting around her. 'There must have been a third man up there all the time.'
I didn't see how there could have been, though, or he would have surely intervened in the firefight. But the only other explanation I could think of didn't make sense either. Neither of the sentries we'd taken out had any vox gear, so how could they have called for help?
'I'm more worried about the ones down here,' Mira said, cracking off a couple of shots before I could stop her, which took one of the troopers advancing on us down and sent the rest scurrying for cover. She grinned exultantly at me, before returning her eye to the sights. 'I got one!'
'Instead of holding your fire long enough to be sure of several, when they got a bit closer,' I said, trying not to sound too hacked off about it. I readied my own weapons, hunkering down just as a las-bolt hit the discoloured metal above us, sending a brief rain of rust particles pattering off my hat. As I'd feared, the man on the building was targeting us too, although, thank the Emperor, he seemed to be an indifferent marksman.
'I think I'm doing pretty well, actually,' Mira snapped, turning to send a couple of retaliatory las-bolts back in the direction of the upper floor. She didn't seem to hit anything this time, but successfully discouraged whoever it was from trying again for a moment or two. 'At least I'm shooting at them, instead of just criticising all the time.'
Nothing in all my years as a commissar had prepared me for a response like that, but then I'd never encountered anyone quite like Mira before either; at least, not in a parody of a military uniform, and apparently trying to live up to it. My dealings with the daughters of the aristocracy had, up until that point, been confined to the kind of soirees my fraudulent reputation had attracted invitations to, generally as part of a delegation from an Imperial Guard contingent who'd either just arrived in-system to deal with some pressing threat, or were about to depart after having done so. I knew they were reasonably good dancers, moderately dull conversationalists and tolerably pleasant company for the night, but that was about all. There was little point in frittering our last few
