Mallor and Varl turned and saw the horror slithering up from the chamber, saw Suth helpless and Corbec frozen, saw the pulpy red slick that had been Durcan.
'Daemon! Daemon!' Varl screamed down the comm link. 'DALMON!'
Gaunt held up a hand and announced a ten minute rest. The group eased back and took the weight off their feet, leaning on tree trunks, hunkering down.
Meryn took the medi-pack back to Bragg and helped him lower the stretcher-bed.
'Oh, feth!' Milo heard him say.
Milo crossed over as Gaunt himself approached.
Meryn looked up, treating the ugly wounds of the two unconscious men. 'It's this place,' he explained, 'hot, wet… spores in the air… insects. Their wounds gel re-infected as fast as I clean them. Obel's fading fast. Some kind of fungus necrotizing the raw flesh. Maggots too.' He shook his head and continued with his work.
Milo moved away. The smell rising from the wounded men was not pleasant.
Nearby stood the co-pilot. He'd pulled his flight helmet off, and was staring nervously into the green darkness around them, clutching his laspistol. Milo thought he looked young, no older than him. The flesh around his cranial implants looked raw and fresh. He probably feels just like me, Milo decided. In over his head.
He had just considered approaching the navy cadet and speaking to him when the low whine of gunfire sang through the trees. Everyone ducked for cover, and there was a staccato series of safety locks disengaging and power-cells humming to life.
Near to Milo, Gaunt crawled forward, tapping his micro-bead.
'Rawne? Answer!' he hissed. The major, with Feygor, Caffran and a trooper called Kalen, had scouted ahead towards the mysterious structure.
'F'irefight!' came Rawne's response, Milo picking it up via his own comm-bead. 'We're pinned! Daagh! Throne of Earth! There's—'
The link went dead.
'Damn!' Gaunt hissed. Tie clambered to his feet. 'Meryn! Bragg! Guard the wounded! You, Navy boy! Stay with them! The rest with me, fire-team spread!'
The Ghosts moved forward and Milo moved with them, checking his pistol was cleared to fire. Despite the fear, he felt pride. The commissar had needed all the men he could muster. He had not thought twice about including Milo.
Corbec was sure: his life was over when Larkin started shooting. Driven over the edge by what he had seen nailed along the wall, Larkin just went crazy; mindless, oblivious to the otherwise transfixing image of Chaos in that old tenement. Larkin simply opened fire and kept firing. 'Larkin! Larkin!' Corbec hissed.
The little man's howl was drying away into a hoarse whisper. A repetitive clicking came from the lasgun in his hands, the power cell exhausted.
The lashing tentacles of the vast thing in the hallway had been driven back by the hammerblow of relentless laser fire.
They had a moment of grace, time to retreat.
Corbec led his scrambling fire-team back down the tenement hall, half-carrying Larkin.
'Oh feth! Oh feth! Oh feth!' Larkin repeated, over and over.
'Shut up, Larks!' warned Corbec. 'Contact Fleet Command!' he yelled to Raglon over his bead. 'Tell them what we've found!'
In the cover of a slumped tree-stump, Trooper Caffran sighted his lasgun to his shoulder and loosed a burst of laser shot that sliced explosively through the foliage ahead. Bolter fire returned, smacking into the wood around him, blasting sprays of splinters and gouts of sap.
'Major Rawne?' Caffran yelled. 'Comm link's dead!'
'I know!' spat Rawne, dropped down against a tree nearby as metal shot exploded the bark behind him. He threw down Gaunt's chainsword and swung his own lasgun up to fire.
Feygor took up a prone position, blasting with his own weapon, Kalen to his side. The four Ghost lasguns blasted an arc of fire into the dense trees, the dim grove flickering with the muzzle flashes.
Rawne span, his gun lowered, but dropped his aim with a curse as he saw Gaunt moving in behind them, the men in fire-team line.
'Report!' hissed Gaunt.
'We just walked into heavy bolter fire. Enemy positions ahead, unseen. Feels like an ambush, but who knew we were coming?'
'Comm link?'
'Dead… jammed.'
'Would help if we could see what we were shooting at,' Gaunt remarked. He waved a ''come here'' to Trooper Brostin, who hurried over, cradling the single flamer they'd pulled intact from the troop-ship.
'Positions!' Gaunt yelled, and fanned his men out so that all could take a clear shot once the target was revealed. 'Brostin?'
The trooper triggered the flame cannon and a volcanic spear of liquid fire spat into the dense undergrowth. Maintaining the spurt, like a horizontal fountain of fire, Brostin swept it left and right.
The trees, horsetails and giant ferns ahead flared and blazed, some of them igniting as if their sap was petrol, some wilting and withering like dust. In twenty seconds, a wall of jungle had been scorched aside and they had a clear view sixty metres into an artificially cleared area.
Silence. Not even the bolter fire which had got them ducking.
