Corbec looked up out of the loophole he was holding, his shaggy head coated in soot and grime. He shot a beaming grin when he saw Mkoll.
“About time you got here.”
“Came as fast as we could. The bastards have the Spoil now. We left it to them.”
Corbec got up and slapped Mkoll on the arm. “You all make it through?”
“Yeah, Domor, Larkin, MkVenner—all the boys. I’ve spread them out through our lines.”
“Good work. We need good marksman coverage all along. Feth, but this is ugly work.”
They looked round, hearing angry voices down the burned- out hall. Vervun Primary troops with long-barrelled lasguns were moving in to join the defence.
“The Spoilers, so called,” Mkoll explained to his colonel. “Dedicated to protecting the Spoil. Took a while to convince them that falling back was the smart choice. They’d have held the slag-slopes forever. It’s a pride thing.”
“We understand pride, don’t we?” grimaced Corbec.
Mkoll nodded. He pointed out the leader of the Spoilers, a bulky man with bloodshot eyes who was doing most of the shouting and cursing. “That’s ‘Gak’ Ormon. Spoiler commander.”
Corbec sauntered over to the big Verghastite.
“Corbec, Tanith First-and-Only.”
“Major Ormon. I want to lodge a complaint, colonel. Your man Mkoll ordered our withdrawal from the Spoil, and—”
Corbec cut him short. “We’re fighting for our fething lives and you want to complain? Shut up. Get used to it. Mkoll made a good call. Another half an hour and you would have been surrounded and dead. You want a ‘spoil’ to defend? Take a look!” He gestured out of a shattered window at the wasteland around. “Start thinking like a soldier, and stop cussing and whining. There’s more than unit pride at stake here.”
Ormon opened and closed his mouth a few times like a fish. “I’m glad we understand each other,” Corbec said.
In the north-eastern corner of the hive, Sergeant Varl and Major Rodyin had command of one hundred and seventy or so men holding the burning docks. Half were Tanith; the rest, Vervun Primary and Roane. Zoican stormtroops were blasting in along the Hass East Causeway under the Hiraldi road-bridge, and the Imperial forces were being driven back through the hive’s promethium depots. Several bulk capacity tanks were already ablaze and liquescent fire spurted from derricks and spout-vents.
Firing tight bursts, Varl crossed a depot freightway and dropped into cover beside Major Rodyin, who had paused to fiddle with the cracked lens of his spectacles.
“No sign of support. I’ve been trying the vox. We’re on our own,” the Vervun officer remarked.
Varl nodded. “We can do that. Just a few of us should be able to keep them busy in these industrial sectors.”
“Unless they move armour our way.”
Varl sighed. The hiver was pessimism personified.
“Did you see the way the Zoicans’ armour was smeared with tar and oil?”
“I did,” said Varl, clipping off a few more shots. “What of it?”
“I think that’s how they got in, how they broke us open. They came through the pipeline from Vannick Hive.” Rodyin pointed out across the depot to the series of vast fuel-pipe routes that came in over the river on metal stilt legs from the northern hinterlands. “The pipes come in right under the Curtain Wall.”
“Why the feth weren’t they shut down?” snapped Varl.
Rodyin shrugged. “They were meant to be. That’s what I was told, anyway. The directive was circulated weeks ago, right after Vannick was obliterated. The guilds controlling the fuelways were ordered to blow the pipes on the far shore and fill the rest with rockcrete.”
“Someone didn’t do their job properly,” Varl mused. Somehow the information aggravated him. It was way too fething late to find out how they had been breached.
The fight at hand took his mind off it. Persistent rocket grenades were tumbling onto them from a loading dock at the edge of the depot. Varl ordered a pack of Roane down to establish covering fire and then sent Brostin in with the flamer.
He edged the rest of his men along down the devastated depot roadway, sometimes using the litter of metal plating and broken girders as cover, sometimes having to negotiate ways over or around it. A fuel lank sixty metres away blew out with huge, bright fury.
Logris, Meryn and Nehn, working forward with a handful of Vervun Primary troopers, almost ran into a Zoican fireteam in a drain-away under one of the main derrick rigs. The Tanith laid in fearlessly with bayonets, but the Vervunhivers tried to find room to shoot and several were cut down.
Hearing the commotion over his microbead, Varl charged in with several other Tanith, spiking the first ochre-suited soldier he met with his silver bayonet. Another sliced at him with a boarding hatchet and Varl punched his head off with one blow from his metal arm.
Major Rodyin came in behind, shooting his autopistol frantically. He seemed pale and short of breath. Varl knew that Rodyin had never been in combat like this before. In truth, the man had never been in combat at all before that day.
Three desperate, bloody minutes of close fighting cleared the drain-away of Zoicans. Logris and Nehn set up solid fire positions down the gully, overlooking the dock causeway.
Rodyin took off his glasses and tried to adjust the earpieces with shaking hands. He looked like he was about to weep.
“You alright, major?” Varl asked. He knew full well Rodyin wasn’t, but he suspected it had less to do with combat shock and more to do with the sight of his home city falling around him. Varl could certainly sympathise with that.
Rodyin nodded, replacing his spectacles. “The more I kill, the better I feel.”
Nearby, Corporal Meryn laughed. “The major sounds like Gaunt himself!”
The notion seemed to please Rodyin.
“What now? Left or right?” Meryn asked. He was wearing bulky fuel-worker’s overalls in place of the Tanith kit which had been scorched off him. His seared scalp was caked with dried blood and matted tufts of scorched hair.
“Feth knows,” Varl answered.
“Right. We try to push down the river towards the bridge,” Rodyin said with great certainty.
Varl said nothing. He’d rather have stayed put or even fallen back a little to consolidate. The last thing they wanted was to overreach themselves, yet Rodyin was determined. Varl was uneasy following the major, even though the Verghastite had rank. But Willard was dead—Varl had seen his burning body fall from the Wall—and there was no one of authority to back him up.
