Ban Daur nodded and began to resource data via his slate.
“Salvador Sondar has total control of the Shield mechanism,” said Kowle suddenly. “He exists on Level Top-700. His palace is protected by obsidian-grade security.”
Gaunt looked at Kowle bemused.
“It sounded for a moment there like you were trying to help, Pius.”
Kowle spat on the floor. “I don’t really want to die, Ibram. I know this hive. I know its workings. I’d be the callous bastard you think I am if I didn’t offer my knowledge.”
“Go on,” said Gaunt cautiously.
“Salvador Sondar has been borderline mad since I first met him. He’s a recluse, preferring to spend his time in an awareness tank in his chambers. Yet he has absolute control of the hive defences. They’re hard-wired into his brain. If you intend to turn the Shield back on, you’ll have to deal with the High Master himself.”
The lift cage lurched as a Shockwave passed through the Spine. Gaunt looked out of the cage door as they ascended and he saw a flickering procession of empty halls, then some thick with screaming habbers beating on the cage bars. They rose past fire-black levels and ones where twisted skeletons, baked dry by the heat of incendiaries, clawed at the lift doors.
One level was ablaze and they flinched as they passed up by its flames.
Daur handed Gaunt the slate with a plan of the upper Spine loaded onto it.
Another four hundred levels, Gaunt thought, watching the lights on the lift’s indicator panel, and the High Master and I will have ourselves a reckoning.
* * * * *
Lord Chass and his three bodyguards had reached Level Top-700 and forced their way in through the powerless blast doors.
Shots came their way the moment they emerged, killing one of the bodyguards outright with a head wound.
Chass pulled out his gun and fired it as his remaining bodyguards unshrouded their hand-cannons and blasted tracer strings down the plush, marble-walled atrium.
A las-round hit Lord Chass in the left knee and dropped him face down onto the carpet. The pain was extraordinary, but he didn’t cry out. His bodyguards ran to him and were both cut down by sprays of las-fire.
His lifeblood was pumping away through his leg wound. Lord Chass knew he was going to die very soon.
He crawled forward, a few centimetres at a time, soaking the priceless carpet with his blood. He couldn’t see who or what was firing at him. The atrium was made of green cipolin stone and decorated with House Sondar banners. Light globes hung on chains from the high roof. At the atrium’s far end, a wide arch led through into the audience hall, the Sondar chapel and the private residence.
He flopped over behind a sandstone jardiniиre and loaded a fresh shell into his compact handgun. He thought about reaching for one of the fallen bodyguards’ laspistols, but they were exposed in the open, and Sondar’s unseen protectors were raking the carpeted floor with steady fire.
Then the firing stopped. Three meat puppets swung into view in the archway: a cloaked female, a naked youth covered in gold body-paint, and something rank and emaciated that was only vaguely human any more. All lolled wretchedly, eyes vacant, lasrifles wired into their hands. They came unsteadily down the atrium, wobbling on the feed-tubes and wires that played out from a recessed trackway in the ceiling. Though their eyes didn’t move, they seemed to sense him. Chass knew they were guided by heat and motion systems wired into the palace walls. They fired again, blowing chunks off the jardiniиre and hitting Chass in the foot and shin of his already wounded leg. He fired his single-shot piece and the heavy round took the youth’s head off. It continued to advance and shoot.
A sudden burst of autogun fire licked down the atrium and tore the puppets to pieces, leaving nothing but a few shreds of flesh trailing from the wires.
Four men came down the hall from the main entrance. Chass knew their maroon body-glove armour made them guards from Croe’s personal retinue. Their leader was Isak. He knelt by Lord Chass as his companions moved on to secure the archway. Isak bowed his respect to the nobleman, then reached into his harness pouches for field dressings.
“The marshal sent you?”
“I am instructed to take any action necessary to restore the Shield, lord. That includes the suppression of High Master Sondar and his forces.”
At last Croe is acting with the same purpose as me, thought Chass. He felt no pain from Isak’s work on his wounds. He was cold and everything seemed distant. “Help me up,” he told the bodyguard. “You’ll need the geno-print of a noble to activate the Shield systems.”
Isak nodded and hoisted Lord Chass up by the armpits, as if he was as light as a feather. From beyond the arch came the sounds of renewed gunfire.
In the colonnade beyond the atrium—a long cloister of wooden beams and inlaid upper balconies with a roof of stained glass—Isak’s men had encountered more servitor puppets. Some were appearing in the balcony galleries, others moving down the open length of the cloister. The House Croe guardsmen were pinned near the archway.
Lord Chass, leaning heavily on Isak for support, noticed a smell, a spicy taint that stung his nostrils, sweeter and more subtle than the sharp pungency of the discharged weapons. “What is that smell?” he whispered, half to himself.
“Chaos,” Ibram Gaunt said.
Chass and Isak looked round from the archway where they were sheltering and saw Gaunt leading the team of Blueblood elite down the atrium with silent precision. Daur, Kowle and Sturm were at the back of the line, Gilbear alongside the commissar. All weapons were drawn.
“It seems we share a mission,” Gaunt said dryly. He gestured to Gilbear and the Volpone moved three of his seven troopers round to cover the far side of the arch. In a moment, they were adding the considerable force of their hellguns to the dispute.
“Sic semper tyrannis,” Chass whispered and smiled at Gaunt. “I knew you would serve Vervunhive with true valour…”
His voice was faint. Gaunt looked at the wounds that mauled the nobleman’s leg. Isak had applied a tourniquet high up on the thigh, but his robes were soaked with blood.
Gaunt caught Isak’s look. They both knew how close to death Chass was.
Chass knew it too. “I’d like to see us victorious before my passing, colonel-commissar.”
Gaunt nodded. He shouted to the Volpone. “Let’s not waste any more time! Take the chamber now!”
Gilbear looked across and tapped the grenade launcher mounted under his hellgun’s barrel with a predatory grin. “Permission?”
“Given!” said Gaunt. “Tell your men in there to duck and cover!” he told Isak and the bodyguard snarled through his microbead.
Gilbear and one of his point men bellowed the Volpone battle-pledge at the tops of their lungs as they launched grenade after grenade in through the arch. The launcher mechanisms thumped and clacked as they pumped them.
