'I'll take that,' Kreff said, trying to hide his grin as he sauntered away.
Gaunt moved in close to the cabins, bolt pistol in hand. Behind him came Feygor and Caffran, edging slowly.
There was a low whirr and one of the servitors nearby detected the movement and swung around, bringing its automated weapon to bear.
Gaunt blasted it apart with three quick shots. Diving forward, he slammed in through the doorway, rolling up in the blue, cold, artificial light of the interior, hunting for a target.
There was nothing but darkness. And dead stillness. Gaunt moved into the low habitat, mindful of the gloom. Ahead, a dull phosphorescence shone. There was a dark bunkroom full of over-thrown furniture and scattered papers. Gaunt took a look at one leaf and knew he would have to have them all burnt.
Rawne and Feygor slid in behind him.
'What is this?' Rawne asked.
'We'll see…' murmured Gaunt.
They moved through the habitat into a greenhouse where the air was humid. There were things growing in the hydroponics vats that Gaunt didn't want to look at. Fibrous, swollen, bulging things, pulsing with hideous life.
'What is this place?' asked Feygor, horrified.
'The start of it… the beginning of Caligula's fall,' Gaunt said. 'One of the industrialists of this world, hot- housing something he could not understand. The competition for better crops is fierce here. This poor fool didn't realise what he was growing.'
Or at least, Gaunt thought, I hope he didn't. If this had been done with foreknowledge, deliberately… He shook the idea away.
'Burn it. Burn it all,' he told his men.
'Not all,' Kalen said, entering behind them. 'I scouted around the perimeter. Whoever owned this place has a shuttle bedded in a silo out back.'
Gaunt smiled. The Emperor will always provide.
'So he didn't die?' mused Corbec, sat on his bunk in the troop bay. Bragg shook his head and swigged from the bottle of sacra. 'Don't think nothing's gonna kill old Gaunt. He said he was gonna get us all out, and he did. Even Obel and Brennan.'
Corbec thought about this. 'Actually,' he said finally, 'I meant Rawne.'
They both looked across the quiet bay to where Rawne and Feygor sat in quiet conversation.
'Oh, him. No, worse luck.' Bragg passed the bottle back to Corbec. 'So, I hear you had some fun of your own?'
A forward post, looking out into the water-choked thickness of the Monthax jungles. The flies were thick out here, like sparkling dust in the air. Amphibians gurgled and chugged in the mudbanks.
The sappers had raised the spit-post out beyond the broad levees of the main embankment, one of six that allowed the Tanith snipers greater reach into the front line. They were long, zagged and lined with frag-sacking and a double layer of overlapped flak-boards.
Gaunt edged along the spit, keeping low, passing the sentries at the heavy-bolter post at the halfway point. The mud, unmoving and stagnant in the dug-away bed, stank like liquescent death. The sagging cable of a land- line voxcaster ran down the length of the sacking, held above the water by iron loop-pins. Gaunt knew it ended at a vox-set at the sniper post. In the event of attack, he would want the earliest warning from his keen-eyed forwards, and one that could be conveyed by good old, reliable, un-scrambleable cable.
Larkin was his usual edgy self. At the loop hole at the end of the spit-post, he was sat on a nest of sacking, meticulously polishing his weapon.
A compulsive, Gaunt thought. The commissar stepped up to him. Larkin looked around, tense. 'You always look like you're afraid of me,' Gaunt said. 'Oh no, sir. Not you, sir.'
'I'd hate to think so. I count on men like you, Larkin. Men with particular skills.'
'I'm gratified, commissar.'
Larkin's weapon was sparkling, yet still the man worked the cloth to it. 'Carry on,' said Gaunt. But for how much longer, he wondered?
FIVE
Larkin thought about death. He thought he might well have begged for it long ago, had he not been so scared of it. He had never figured out, though he had spent whole nights wondering it, whether he was more afraid of death itself or the fear of death. Worse, there had been so many times when he had expected to find out. So many moments caught in Death's frosty gaze, snapped at by Death's steel incisors. The question had been nearly answered so many times.
Now perhaps, he would find out. Here. Death, or the fear of death.
If the Angel knew, she was saying nothing. Her stern face was turned down, demure, eyes closed as if sleeping, praying hands clasped at her breast.
Outside, below them, the war to take Bucephalon raged. The stained glass in the huge lancet window, what remained of it, shook and twinkled with reflections of tracer sprays, salvos of blazing rockets, bright air- bursts.
Larkin sat back against the cold stone pillar and rubbed a dirty hand around his lean jaw. His breathing was slowing now at last, his pulse dropping, the anxiety attack that had seen him wailing and gasping five minutes ago was passing like a cyclone. Or maybe he was just in the eye of that storm.
