the twitching bone-runes began to shriek.
He washed the hall with another gout to be sure, and then Rawne, Haller and Bragg led off to secure the hall. Bragg reached the position the enemy had been holding and he stepped over the black, fused corpses. There was another accessway to his left and he sprayed bursts of autogun fire through the door mouth.
Haller moved to the right and went over hard as a half- burned Zoican soldier threw himself at the scratch officer. The blackened thing, its ceramite armour part-melted into its flesh by Dremmond’s flames, tore at him in a frenzy. Haller screamed out, frantic. Rawne grabbed the Zoican and threw it off Haller. It bounced off a wall and, before it could rise, Rawne had shot it four times with his lasgun.
“I owe you, Ghost,” said Haller, getting up.
“No, you don’t, habber. I don’t like it when any one owes me anything. Forget it.”
Haller paused, as if slapped in the face. He hadn’t much liked the look of the Tanith major when they had all first assembled. Banda had whispered Rawne had “toxic eyes.” It seemed true. Even the haughty Volpone seemed to be making more of an effort to be comradely than this Tanith bastard.
“Suit yourself,” Haller said.
“He always does,” mocked Bragg. The big Ghost knew it was neither the time nor the place to bring Haller up to speed on Rawne’s history, the fact that Rawne hated Gaunt with an inhuman passion precisely because “he owed him.”
“Shut it and get soldiering!” Rawne snorted to Bragg. Already there were noises from the side tunnels and fresh Zoican forces were firing on them.
The main strike force had moved up by then. Gilbear swung a party of Blue-bloods to the right and cremated a side-tunnel with grenades from their under-barrel launchers. MkVenner hurried right with four Tanith and a number of scratches, moving to secure their advance from enemy prosecution. A las-round hit him in the arm and spun him to the deck. Domor, right behind him, knelt over the injured scout and sprayed las-fire down at the hidden shooter, calling for a medic. Beside him, Vinya, one of the loom-girls, rebounded off the wall as a brace of las-shots caught her in the belly. Several troopers pushed past Domor to hold the side-tunnel, flaying las-fire down into the dark.
Gherran joined Domor, running low, holding a las pistol in one hand, the other hand curled around the narthecium kit to stop it jolting.
“It’s MkVenner—” Domor began. The medic dropped to his knees beside the scout. The las-shot had exploded MkVenner’s left elbow and disintegrated his biceps. He was curled up, crying with pain, but he forced his voice to work.
“Her first—her!” he said, nodding over at Vinya.
“Let me look at it, MkVenner,” Gherran said.
“No! You know fething triage: serious cases first! She’s gut- shot! See to her!”
“Give him this,” Gherran told Domor, handing him a gauze- packed inoculator full of high-dose painkillers. He scrambled over to the sprawled scratch soldier. She was twisted like a broken puppet, her chin forced into her chest where she lay with the back of her head against the wall. Blood oozed out of her in a wide pool. The wound itself had self-cauterised in charred, knotty lumps, but the damage had shredded her insides, and she was bleeding out rapidly.
“Oh, feth!” Gherran spat. “Someone give me a hand here!”
Kolea was beside him. “Tell me how.”
“Pressure: here and here. Hold it tight. No, tight like you mean it!”
They were both sodden with her blood. She stirred, moaning.
“Vinya… s’okay… Stay awake…” Kolea murmured to her, his hands damping hard on her ruined organs.
He looked around at Gherran as he worked frantically.
“She’s not going to make it, is she?”
“Major trauma,” Gherran explained as he worked. “I can stabilise her, but no, it’s just a matter of time.”
Kolea nodded. He let go and leaned down to whisper in her ear, “You fought well, Vinya Terrigo of Hab 45/jad. Vervunhive will never forget your courage. The hive loves you for your devotion.”
Then he reached down with huge, gentle hands and snapped her neck.
“Oh, God-Emperor!” Gherran cried, recoiling in horror.
“There’s a man you can save,” Kolea said, pointing at MkVenner with a bloody hand. “I love my people, and I will fight for them with every last measure of my strength, but this would have uselessly wasted the time of a good medic when there are better causes. Her pain is over. She has found peace.”
Gherran wiped his mouth.
“I—” he began.
“If you were going to tell me you couldn’t begin to understand what we habbers have gone through to get here, save it. I don’t want your pity.”
“Actually, friend, I was going to tell you I do understand. And admire your courage, to boot. Our lives are all on the line fighting for your home. Me, I don’t have a home anymore. So, feth you and that oh-so-noble crap.” Gherran gathered his kit-pack and moved over to MkVenner.
Kolea picked up his lasgun and strode past, rejoining the fight.
Cocoer, Neskon and Flinn had made it to the corner of the right hand side access, and they drove the gathering Zoicans backwards. Gaunt, with Genx and Maroy, crawled up behind them.
“Access?” asked Gaunt.
“Not a fething hope, sir!” sang out Cocoer. The air was flickering with las crossfire.
“Bloody bastard hell!” Neskon cried as his gun jammed. He shook it. Gaunt grabbed him and yanked him down into cover just as laser blasts pummelled the wall above his head.
“Never forget the drill, Neskon. Gun jams: duck and cover. Don’t stand there playing with it.”
“No, colonel-commissar.”
“I like you better alive.”
“Me… me too, sir.”
Rilke, reckoned to be the best sniper in the Ghosts after Larkin, and the scratch woman Nessa moved up to flank them. Rilke wasted two shots trying to hit a Zoican in cover down the tunnel. Nessa, with her standard-issue lasgun, picked him off and the Zoican behind him.
“Where’d you learn to shoot like that?” Rilke protested, but she didn’t hear him. She couldn’t hear him.
Gaunt looked across at her, waiting until she saw his face. “Good,” he said.
