Eisenhorn Omnibus

I backed down the corridor, hugging the wall. The access-way to the air-gate was a wide, cable-lined passage, octagonal in cross-section and lit only by deck lights. The troopers' slow, buzzing shots hissed down the hallway at me. I fired back again, but missed my target. A salvo of rounds blew out a power relay on the wall nearby in a shower of sparks. I ducked away into shadows, and found the latch-handle of a shutter in the small of my back.

I turned, pulled it free and threw myself through it as a blizzard of shots impacted along the access-way wall.

On the other side of the shutter, I found a narrow inspection tunnel for the airgate's main docking mechanisms. The floor was metal grille, and the tight walls were thick with networks of cables and plumper hydraulic hoses. At the end, a bare metal ladder dropped down through a floor-well or up into an inspection shaft.

There was no time to climb either way. The first trooper was pushing through the shutter and raising his weapon. I shot down the length of the tunnel and blew out his chest-plate, and then jumped off the grille into the ladder well.

Five metres down, I slammed into a cage-platform. There was only red auxiliary light down here. The troopers' visors had vision amplifiers.

I was down in the guts of the vast docking clamp now, crawling between huge greased pistons and hydraulic rams the size of mature bluewood firs. Gases vented and lubricant fluids drizzled amid dangling loops of chain. The throb of heavy-duty compressors and atmosphere regulators filled the air.

I got into cover. All four red tell-tale lights on the stubber's grip were showing. I ejected the disposable plastic clip and slid the fresh one into place. Four green lights lit up in place of the red ones.

There was noise from the ladder-well. Two bulky dark shapes were moving down, backlit by the light from above.

Their visors had heat-enhancement too. That was clear the moment they both started firing at my position. I buried myself behind a piston unit but a round ricocheted off the oily metal and slammed into my right shoulder, driving me forward against the deck. My face hit the grille, and it reopened the gash in my cheek, popping out several of the butterfly clips that were just beginning to get the torn flesh to knit back together.

More shots rattled off the scant metal cover. Another ricochet hit the toe of my boot, and another punched into my arm, smashing my hand back against the wall behind me.

The impact kicked the stubber from my grip. It bounced away across the floor, just out of reach, the four green lights taunting me.

There were at least three of them out there now, moving through the confined space between machinery, firing bursts my way. I crawled on hands and knees along behind a horizontal clamp piston, low-velocity rounds pinking off the wall behind and above me.

I thought about using the will, but I had no chance of getting line of sight to try any sophisticated mind trick.

At the back end of the massive clamp, I found cover by the arrestor baffles and giant kinetic dampers that soften the impact of another ship against the docking arms. Greenish light filtered from a small control panel mounted in the wall between the dampers. The panel had a toughened plastic hood over it like a public vox-booth, and a glance showed me it was a test-reset terminal for docking array maintenance. I tried punching several icons, but the small, oval plate displayed the message Terminal locked out. Automatic safety measures were in place because a ship – the naval security troopers' pinnace – was in the docking clamp, mated to the airgate on the deck above.

I could hear scrambling above the ambient noise. The first of the troopers was clambering down the side of the clamp, following my route back to the dampers.

I took out my inquisitorial rosette. It is a badge of office and a great deal more besides. A press of my thumb deployed the micro multi-key from its recess, and I slid it into the terminal's socket. It engaged. The screen blanked. My rosette had up to magenta level Imperial clearance. I prayed Maxilla had not encoded his entire ship with personal encryptions.

The screen flashed again. I tapped a release order into the terminal.

'Dock array in active use,' it told me in blunt green letters.

I hit override.

With a tumultuous grinding, the docking clamp disengaged. Dampers roared. Steam vented explosively. Alarms started wailing.

There was an agonised scream as the trooper on my heels was gripped and then crashed from the waist down by ten tonnes of expanding piston-sleeve.

From the deck far above, there were explosive bangs and the shriek of shearing metal. I could barely hear them above the mechanical din in the clamp chamber.

When the sighing and hissing of the massive pistons died away and the venting gases reduced to a sporadic gasp, I clambered up from behind the dampers. The entire architecture of the chamber had altered as the massive docking engines had switched from active to disengaged. Two troopers had been crashed by the heavy gear, another lay dead under a steam vent, braised in his armour by a rush of superheated steam.

I took up a fallen naval-issue autogun and retraced my steps.

By my count, there were still four loose and active. I came back along the inspection tunnel and re-entered the access-way. Warning lights strobed all along the passage and muted alarms still sounded. A figure suddenly appeared to my left. 1 wheeled around. It was Betancore. He was looking straight past me, one of his elegant needle pistols aimed straight at me. He fired it twice.

A distinctive stinging buzz resounded loud in my ears – and a security trooper at the far end of the passage staggered out of cover. Another shot and the man slammed over, feet out from under him.

'Came as soon as you gave the signal/ said Betancore.

'What's your tally?'

'Four, so far.'

'Then we're probably done. But stay sharp.' I smiled at myself. Telling Midas Betancore to stay sharp was like telling a dog to stay hairy.

'You're a mess/ he told me. What the hell happened?'

Blood ran down the side of my face from the reopened gash, 1 was moving awkwardly from the glancing hits to my shoulder and arm, and I was thoroughly smirched in machine oil from the docking mechanism.

'This wasn't an inspection. They were looking for me/

'Naval security?'

'I don't think so. They lacked precision and didn't know procedure/

'But they had kit, weapons – a Navy pinnace, Emperor damn them!'

'That's what worries me/

We went back to the airgate. An emergency shutter had come down to seal the breach when my makeshift undocking had torn the pinnace off the side of the Essene. Through side ports, I could see its grey hull skewed alongside us, still attached to the clamps by one of its own docking extensors, though that was badly twisted. Its integral airgate had blown on disconnection and at least the passenger section was open to hard vacuum. If the crew had survived, they would be in the foresection, though probably helpless. Glittering debris, scraps of metal plating and sheared sections of extensor hung in the void outside.

I checked Fischig. He was alive. His Arbites uniform was heavily laced with armour, but the short-range impacts had given him internal injuries; he was unconscious and leaking blood from the mouth.

Betancore found Maxilla beyond the shattered glass doors of the evacsuit-bay. He had crawled across the floor and propped himself against