The upper hallway of car three was even colder than the chill of car eight. The end window on the port side, beside the intercarriage articulation, was wide open and freezing air and snow was whirling in. The window had been cut out of its frame with a powerblade or melta torch.
The light was bad. Gloomy, half-dimmed lamps aggravated by the fretful blink of the alarm lights. The klaxons still whooped.
I realised there were three dark shapes halfway down the hall ahead of me, skulking low. They hadn't heard me arrive over the howl of the blizzard and the shrill of the alarms.
I hugged the panelled wall. Barbarisater throbbed, hungry. Even passively, I could sense the three men were psi-shielded. They made big silhouettes. Combat armour. I saw the ugly shadow of an assault weapon as the point man waved his partners forward.
Forward towards the doors of our compartments.
I edged closer.
The point man, oozing professionalism as he visually checked his rear, saw me.
And all hell broke loose.
FOURTEEN
Barbarisater versus the janissaries.
Etrik, blade to blade. Lunchtime drinks in New Gevae.
The two killers nearest me turned and opened fire with blunt, large calibre autoguns. I suppose the sword in my hand was a damn give away, but they'd have killed me anyway, even if they had mistaken me for a wayward bystander.
They were professional killers, Vessorine janissaries. They had a job to do, a contract to fulfill, and anyone in their way was a target.
The fact that they were using solid-round weapons confirmed they were Vessorine. The ultimate military pragmatists. They'd tailed the train in a poorly-insulated speeder and deployed through a blizzard. In those conditions, standard las-weapons might have died, their cell-power drained by the cold. But a well-lubricated autogun would fire below freezing. It had only to rely on its percussive hammer action.
Vessorine janissaries. I had faced them before without knowing what they were. Now I knew, and their formidable reputation almost gave me pause. Vessorines, three of them. Plated in combat armour and firing heavyweight man-stopper ammunition. Frankly, I'd rather have squared off with angry Kasrkin.
But Barbarisater was in my hand, alert and alive. I had been using my will openly for some time, and that had quickened its strength. I made a
I dived sideways as further shots punched into the hallway carpet and exploded on the inter-wagon doors. People were screaming in the cabins all around.
I rolled and came up on my feet as the first Vessorine rounded the car-end corner and fired half a dozen times. His ejecting shell-cases pattered off his torso in a fog of blue smoke and his gun muzzle lit up like a blowtorch. Point blank.
Except I was behind him.
His gunfire shredded the wagon wall and ruptured the window frame. Barbarisater removed his head.
The second one was charging and firing too. He let out a mask-muffled bellow as he saw his comrade collapse in pieces.
I threw an
Hot red blood was already spurting from his arm stumps and steaming in the freezing air as Barbarisater plunged through his ceramite chest armour and burst his heart. The gunshot walls were painted with instantly frozen dribbles of bloody ice.
A bullet creased the corner of my jaw with enough force to rip open the flesh of my chin and knock me to the carpet. I tried to rise, but the third Vessorine was right over me. I heard his weapon rack.
He screamed. I smelled a burning in the cold air.
I looked up.
The Vessorine was trying to shield himself, as if from a swarm of stinging insects. Crezia's cyber skulls were flitting around him, stabbing repeatedly with their surgical lasers.
His yelps were cut off by the double crack of a las-weapon.
The janissary collapsed like a deadweight at my feet.
I looked down the hall and saw Eleena Koi in the doorway of my room, holding her pistol in a defiant two-handed grip.
'Eleena!' I yelled. 'Get the others out of the compartment! Get mem out into the hall and move them this way!'
'But Medea-' she began.
'Do it!'
I ran to the cut-out car window and hauled myself out into the vicious chill. I had to sheath Barbarisater and it didn't like it. Outside, it was bone-achingly cold and the blizzard pummelled me with hail hard as stones. There was precious little in the way of handholds and
I found something to cling to… solid runnels of ice, I think. My fingers went numb.
I hauled myself up onto the roof of car three, the vast snow-peppered blackness of the Atenate night above me.
The blizzard ensured I couldn't see far. I could barely stand up. The convex aluminium roof of the wagon was iced smooth as a skating rink.
A few steps along and my legs went out. I fell smack on my front, dazed and winded. Blood filled my mouth; I had bitten my tongue.
Spitting blood and made angry by the pain, I dragged myself forward through the elemental deluge. I saw shapes ahead of me in the white-on-black maelstrom. Three more armoured figures on the edge of the roof.
They had lowered a directional detonator onto the window of the cabin I had shared with Aemos. As 1 watched, they triggered it and blasted the window inwards in a hail of glass and fire. The first janissary began to rope down to swing in through the blown window. His comrades were hunched on the rooftop, anchoring his lines.
I leapt up and Barbarisater flew out, crackling in the wet air.
The augmented Carthean warblade came down, splitting the lines in two and cutting deeply into the wagon roof. The descending killer shrieked as he fell away down the side of the two storey carriage.
The other two jerked round like lightning, one going for his sidearm, the other leaping at me with clawing hands. A
The corpse rolled off the car top into the darkness. I stood ready, Barbarisater twitching in my hands. The remaining Vessorine backed away, aiming a large calibre autopistol at me. The two of
