roadway. There was a groan of tortured metal and the Titan itself appeared at the end of the street, traversing its mighty upper body to face us.
Fischig froze in terror. I threw us both forward behind the rusted hulk of an old PDF troop carrier.
Blaster fire ripped down the street, kicking up a wild row of individual impacts that pitted the rocky ground, demolished the edge of a barn and filled the air with greasy flame, smoke and powdered rock.
A flurry of shots sliced through the shell of the troop carrier, splitting its fatigued armour wide open and hurling rusty shrapnel in all directions. The force of the hits actually lifted the carrier's mouldering bulk and spun it around, end to end. I dragged Fischig behind a longhouse and just prevented us from being crushed under the lurching metal shape. The carrier came to rest against the side wall of the prefab, stoving in the wall panels.
The earthshaking footsteps resumed. The Titan was advancing down the street. I looked at Fischig. He was dazed and pale. A ragged chunk of shrapnel had embedded itself in his left shoulder. It would have decapitated him if it hadn't been for the motion tracker unit strapped there. As it was, the tracker was a smouldering wreck and blood poured from the hunk of metal projecting from his trapezius.
'Holy Throne/ he murmured.
I hoisted him up and glanced back across the street. Begundi and Swole had managed to get everyone else back into cover before the barrage. I could see them through the smoke, huddled in the shadows.
I raised my free hand and made gestures that were as clear as possible. I wanted them to back off and regroup. We would have to split up. There was nowhere we dared cross the open street in either direction.
Fischig and I blundered off in the opposite direction, coming out in a drain gully behind the row of longhouses where a stream emptied down mrough the station to the lake. We crossed it using a small wire-caged footbridge and then fell into cover on the far side of a machine shop.
'Where is it?' Fischig wheezed in pain.
I checked. I could see the huge machine towering above the prefabs two hundred metres back, shrouded in the black smoke that was roiling up from its last onslaught. It had reached the old troop carrier and was standing there. It looked for all the worlds as if the giant war-engine was sniffing the air.
It turned again suddenly, filling the air with the sound of whirring gears and clanking joints, and smashed through the longhouse as it moved off after us.
'It's coming this way/ I told Fischig. We started to run again, across the levelled rockcrete apron of the machine shop and then down the gently sloped street towards the command centre.
Fischig had slowed right down. It was gaining on us.
There was a distant, booming roar that echoed around the entire lake basin. A ball of flame rose into the air from the very western end of me station area.
'What the hell was that?' Fischig growled.
The Titan clearly wanted to know too. It adjusted its path and moved away from us, striding towards the site of the unexplained blast, oblivious to the collateral damage it was leaving in its wake.
That/ said a voice behind us, 'was the best diversion I could come up with.'
We looked around and there was Harlon Nayl.
Nayl was a good friend and a respected member of my team. I hadn't seen the old bounty hunter since he had set off for Durer with Fischig's party to conduct the audit. He was a big man, dressed as always in a black combat-armoured bodyglove. With his heavy skull shaved and polished and his grizzled face, he looked a fierce brute, but there was a grace to his movements and a nobility to his stature that always set me in mind of Vownus, the rogue hero of Catuldynus's epic verse allegory
We followed Nayl into the shelter of a storebarn and the bounty hunter immediately began to field dress Fischig's wound. The Battle Titan was still prowling around west of us, investigating the mysterious blast.
'I tried to raise you on the vox, but the channels were screwed/ Nayl said.
'Magnetics/1 said. 'How long have you been here?'
'Since first light. I rented a speeder to follow Thuring. It's hidden up in the hills on the far side of the lake/
'What have you found?' Fischig asked, wincing as Nayl sprayed his wound with antisept.
'Apart from the obvious, you mean?'
'Yes/ I said.
Thuring's got backing. Serious capital support. Maybe a powerful local cult we don't know about, more likely an off-world cabal. He's got manpower, resources, equipment. When I first arrived, I poked around, got a
glimpse of what was in the hangar… that took my breath away, I can tell you. Then I 'borrowed' one of his men and asked some questions/
'Did you get any answers?'
'A few. He was… trained to resist/
I knew Nayl's interrogation techniques were fairly basic.
'How long did he last?'
'About ten minutes/
'And he told you-'
Thuring has known for some time that the Titan was here. Probably information received from his backers. It seems no one knew that Miquol was used by the arch-enemy as a Titan pen during the occupation. The bloody PDF were stationed here for years and never realised what was hidden just up there in the mountains/
I peered out of the barn door. The Titan had come about and was plodding back in our direction. I could taste its bitter psychic anger and feel the earth quivering under my feet.
'Harlon!'
He leapt up and came to join me. 'Damn/ he hissed, viewing the Titan. He took out his detonator again, selected a fresh channel and thumbed the trigger.
There was a flash, a rolling report, and another mass of fire blossomed from the western shore of the lake. The Titan turned immediately and stomped towards the fresh blast.
'It's not going to fall for that many more times/ said Nayl.
'So there was a Titan… that damn thing… abandoned and dormant in the mountains?'
That's about the size of it. Left behind in the mass retreat, never found by Imperial liberators. Sealed in a shielded cavern… along with two more like it/
Three Titans?' snarled Fischig.
They've taken this long to get just that one working/ said Nayl. 'Thuring's aboard that thing, commanding it personally. He's delighted with his new toy, even though it's not up to optimum. You'll notice it's only used its solid munition weapon. I don't think its reactors are generating enough juice yet to power up its energy batteries/
'Lucky us/ I said.
'What I can't tell you is why Thuring is restoring a monster like that/
There could be many reasons, I thought. He could be doing it on the behest of his rich sponsors, which seemed likely. He could be intending to sell it to the highest bidder. There were cult groups in the Ophidian sub-sector that would love to own that sort of power. He could even be working for some higher power, perhaps enlisted by the actual legions of the arch-enemy.
