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  The sudden crack of a firing squad rang out, punctuating the lieutenant’s thought. Fourth in the last hour and those were the ones they could hear from their billet.

  Before Drado could answer, the shadow of Sergeant Vengo falling across the two men interrupted them. Vengo still had that thousand-yard stare as he waited for Culcis to give him permission to speak.

  “What is it, sergeant?” the lieutenant asked.

  “Orders from the major, sir,” he said in a neutral tone.

  Faced with the hollow shell that was Vengo, Culcis was reminded of the meat grinder again and the fact that the Volpone, like so many, had been sacrificed upon it for Macaroth’s glory.

  Vengo pulled a piece of folded parchment from his jacket pocket and handed it to the lieutenant.

  Breaking the wax seal, Culcis read first to himself and then aloud so Drado could hear him.

  “We’re assembling a force to go into the slum-zones at the Sagorrah perimeter,” he said. “Fifty men ready for 18.00 hours in the muster yard.”

  Drado checked his chrono. “Just under an hour, sir.”

  Lieutenant Culcis nodded. “Get Sergeant Pillier to draft in the rest. Seems Major Regara wants to get his boots a little dirtier. Can’t blame him.”

  Drado was on his feet and heading for the drill sergeant when Culcis stopped him. “And pack this up. We’re done drinking.”

  Drado couldn’t suppress a disappointed frown but continued about his duties without pause. “Very good. Sergeant Vengo,” said Culcis. “You’re dismissed.” Vengo saluted and marched away.

  When he was gone and Culcis was alone, the lieutenant looked to the distant hills. Beyond, he imagined the slum towns. City fighting was brutal. Under the right conditions, it could turn a poorly-armed force into a deadly one. Few Guardsmen relished it over pitched battle. Even trench warfare was preferable.

  Culcis brushed the rust-coloured rime from his sleeve. It was tacky and reeked of metal. He was just glad to be getting out of camp.

  The thud of automatic weapons fire sounded above Culcis’ head as he crouched behind the wall. The brick was baked white and chipped with bullet holes. Though it was approaching evening, the sun set late on the collection world. The street was swathed in shadow, though. The tight confines of its ruined buildings, the tattered tarps and half-demolished awnings created a sort of urban canopy overhead that promoted claustrophobia and paranoia. “Scopes,” said Culcis.

  Drado, squatting next to him, passed them over.

  Poking the magnoculars through a gap in the shattered wall, Culcis could see all the way to the end of the street. His squad were pinned in a narrow defile, too much open ground between them and their targets to make a bayonet charge a viable tactic.

  Still, they didn’t need to.

  Grainy thermal imaging showed Culcis what he needed to see—six insurgents, three with autoguns, another carrying a makeshift burner and a team with a heavy stubber. The cultists were wily enough to hold the cannon in reserve. The autogun fire was desultory, intended to draw the Volpone out.

  Culcis’ men were split, half and half, across the street. While he took refuge behind the wall, the others hunkered down behind a broken down trans-loader. The heavy Cargo-X was thick enough to take automatic fire. His squad was in no immediate danger.

  “I have eyes on,” the lieutenant said into his micro-bead. He was no longer wearing his cap and had on the same type of low-brimmed bowl helmet as his men. He related coordinates to the other side of the street where a blind target marker waited.

  “Light them up, Trooper Korde, if you please.”

  The marker aimed the laser sight of his hellgun according to his lieutenant’s direction. A beam flashed into the street darkness. Culcis followed it through the magnoculars and saw one of the cultists look down to the glow against his chest.

  A few seconds later and the dense thwump of artillery filled the air. The view through the magnoculars was swarmed with white as the explosions from the mortar barrage overwhelmed its thermal imaging.

  Culcis put them down and turned his back as a dust plume billowed down the street towards them. When the roar of explosives had died down and the dust settled, he looked back again. The end of the street was a ruin. A smoking, fire-wreathed crater remained where the cultists had been a few seconds earlier.

  “Way is clear. Squad advance.” Culcis got to his feet and led them out.

  Las-bursts burned through the air between the Volpone and their enemies. Bright beams crisscrossed a space of about fifty metres in a deadly lattice of fire. Hunkered down in doorways and behind clumps of broken rockcrete from the remnants of destroyed buildings, Regara and his squad were holding and returning fire.

  The cultists were occupying a fortified position at the end of a T-junction, an upturned hauler-truck and an improvised wall of sandbagging. Their shooting was inaccurate and lazy. The major despised them for it. His Volpone were outnumbered three to one, or so he’d judged, but by little more than a disorganised rabble.

  “Steady fire!” bellowed Vengo, part of the major’s squad. The men responded with short, sustained bursts, forcing the cultists down. Two even fell, shot through with hellgun beams.

  Regara tapped his micro-bead. “Corporal, we’re wasting ammunition.”

  “Almost there, sir,” a breathless Speers replied a few seconds later.

  “See that you are.”

  For another thirty seconds the fire exchange continued, both sides at an impasse. Then a line of explosions ripped into the cultists from behind and Vengo screamed the order to charge.

  The Volpone ate the metres up the street to the enemy position in seconds, a pall of smoke spilling from behind the makeshift defences which they vaulted with assault-course efficiency. Vengo was at the front and killed a man by thrusting a blade into his neck. A second he smashed with the butt of his hellgun, ramming the man’s nose into his brain and killing the cultist instantly.

  Regara wasn’t to be denied. Despatching a fire-blackened enemy survivor with a nonchalant burst from his hellpistol, he went on to kick an onrushing cultist with his bionic leg. The effect was dramatic as the wretch was sent screaming ten metres backwards, crumpling in a heap with his insides a mulched mess.

  It was all over in a few seconds. The combination of smoke and frag grenades unleashed by Speers, who then went on to scrag several cultists from behind, had created destruction and a diversion for Vengo to launch the assault.

  “You have a talent, Speers, I’ll give you that,” Regara conceded as he was reunited with his aide.

  “Thank you, sir,” the corporal replied, nodding before wiping his knife on the tunic of a dead cultist and sheathing it.

  “Disgusting creatures,” said Regara, levering one of the dead over with his boot. The cultist was emaciated and filthy. He wore a stitched-together amalgam of flak armour, reused several times judging by the wear, and his footwear was little more than rags. The lascarbine he carried was old and poorly maintained. The sighter was ruined. Regara doubted he could have hit anything unless it was point-blank. Perhaps the grenade diversion had been unnecessary after all.

  “How by Throne have these scum given Arbettan so much trouble?” he muttered. “What say you, Sergeant Vengo?”

  Vengo replied with a muted shake of the head. His eyes were distant and glassy.

  Regara didn’t get a chance to question him about it.

  “Sir…” It was Speers. He had his hellgun trained on one of the fallen cultists and was waving the major over.

  One of the enemy lived. He was half-buried under a chunk of hauler-truck. The broken engine block had crushed his feeble body but he was breathing. He was also talking.

  “What’s he saying?” Regara fought the urge to shoot the creature through the skull. Some enemy intelligence might prove useful and unlock some of the mystery around Sagorrah.

  Leaning down to listen, Speers frowned and then looked up. “Tongues of Tcharesh, he just keeps repeating it over and ove
r.”

  “What’s that in his eye?”

  Speers took a closer look. “Some kind of cataract, maybe?”

  The cultist’s right eye was shot through with purple veins. There was also a dark crust on his lips.

  “Does that look like blood to you, sir?” Speers continued.

  Regara noticed Sergeant Vengo was drawn to a marking on the wall, daubed in the same matter coating the dying cultist’s lips. He was staring at it. The major found he couldn’t focus on the precise image. It kept changing.

  “Destroy it,” he said.

  A moment’s indecision by his men increased Regara’s urgency. “Do it now.”

  Trooper Basker came forwards with his flamer and doused the patch of wall until the image was scoured away. All the while, Vengo didn’t retreat. He only backed off once it was gone.

  The stricken cultist’s mantra grew louder, rising to an agitated shriek. Speers killed him with a shot between the eyes.

  “Making my head hurt, sir.”

  Regara looked back to the scorched section of wall where the strange icon had been. “Yes, it was,” he said, noting that Vengo had returned to squad position and was organising the men.

  “Corporal, situation report,” the major added to his aide. He had no desire to linger any longer than was necessary but felt it pertinent to check on their progress.

  Speers pulled a data-slate from his pack and put it in front of the major. It showed a litho-pict mapping out a section of the slums. Regara’s five fire teams, supported by elements of the Castellian Rangers and Harpine Fusiliers, had penetrated and cleared the outer markers of the eastern approach into the sector.

  It was a moderate offensive, more of a fact-finding mission in truth. Regara wanted to gauge the level of insurgent presence in the slums, fathom its strength and likely dispositions. Once he had those details in hand, he could organise a widespread purging operation that would wipe out the traitors utterly. As it stood, he had operational command and just shy of two hundred men at his disposal, spread over an area of several square kilometres. This was just the first approach. There’d be more, and judging by the feeble resistance they’d met so far, such forays wouldn’t be long in coming either. The glyphs were… bothersome, however.

  “How are we faring, corporal?”

  Speers regarded the data-slate, navigated through a few screens to get a wider geographical view of the area. “So far we’ve mapped thirty-two per cent of this quadrant, sir.”

  “And Captains Siegfrien and Trador?”

  “Reporting steady progress. Resistance minimal.”

  “I expected more,” he admitted to Speers.

  “Sir?”

  “The insurgents are dogs, by all that the Emperor is holy, but I thought they’d at least be organised.”

  “You think Commissar Arbettan isn’t taking his job seriously?”

  “I’m not sure what I think at this juncture.” The vox crackling to life interrupted Regara’s train of thought. Trooper Crimmens handed him the receiver cup without needing to be asked. “This is Major Regara.”

  Captain Trador of the Harpine responded. “We encountered some glyphs, major, daubed on the brickwork. One of my scouts, Jedion, has just voxed it in. Please advise.”

  Regara went back to the scorched wall for a third time. His voice was full of conviction. “Destroy it, captain. Destroy any and all glyphs you come across.” He cut the vox link, handing the cup back to Crimmens.

  Regara’s face was grim. “Pack it away, Speers, and have Sergeant Vengo move the men out. We’ve lingered here long enough.”

  Less than a half-hour later the major’s squad was moving low through the north-east quadrant of the slums. They passed an open alleyway. It was long, and at the other end, Regara saw some of the Harpine tracking past in their green armour-mesh, stubby lascarbines held low in a grip suited to a crouched-running advance. Since they’d entered the slums, the major hadn’t seen any of Siegfrien’s men. Most of the Castellians formed the rearguard, anyway, their mortars and autocannons providing vital long-range support to take out particularly entrenched insurgents.

  Regara battle-signed for his squad to continue forwards at pace.

  The narrow streets that fed like corrupted arteries through the slums gave way to an open plaza. It was huge, some kind of provincial square, and bore recent signs of battle. Several dusty craters gouged clay flagstones and exposed the sandy earth beneath. Toppled columns created barricades of debris that broke the expanse into several discrete sections.

  Across the carnage, Regara spotted Lieutenant Culcis and his squad moving into position. At the far end of the plaza, some three hundred metres or so distant, were a pair of tall towers. They looked empty, but then nothing was ever as it appeared to be in an urban engagement, just arriving were a second squad of Volpone, led by Sergeant Pillier, and two squads of Harpine Fusiliers. A third entered through a side street just ahead of Regara. It was the group he’d seen down the alleyway a few minutes earlier. They took up an advanced position, dropping a tube-launcher into a particularly deep crater and aiming it at one of the towers.

  Silence rolled across the shattered esplanade. A hot breeze kicked up grit and created coiling dust eddies. The creak of hinges, the shriek of bending wood and the hollow echo of the low wind passing through the carcass of the city provided a haunting chorus.

  For the first time since they’d entered the slum zone, Culcis felt unease. He’d already noticed the major and Sergeant Pillier. All told, there were sixty men occupying the massive plaza, almost half the strength of the Imperial insertion force.

  Culcis brought up the map of the eastern approach to the slums to his mind. All of its streets and conduits led to this point like tributaries to a river. All other ways had been blocked by toppled buildings or stacked trucks and the wreckage of other vehicles. That alone should have tipped the lieutenant off.

  He surveyed their surroundings through the magnoculars, waiting for the order to advance. Regara had brought them to a halt. Wisely, given the environs. Culcis noticed an altercation brewing between one of the Harpine and his sergeant. The lieutenant couldn’t tell what they were arguing over, only that it was getting heated. Such insubordination was to be expected of lesser regiments.

  Lower breeding, he told himself but was then put in mind of the appalling discipline at Sagorrah in general. Something niggled at Culcis at the back of his mind and he called for the vox. When he managed to raise the Harpine, all he got was a fairly breathless and crazed reply from their comms-officer.

  “He’s lost it, sir. Jedion. He’s raving at the sergeant. He’s—”

  The sound of a gunshot interrupted him.

  To his horror, Culcis watched the Harpine sergeant slump to the ground. It took the Volpone lieutenant a few seconds to realise that Jedion had taken his pistol from him and shot his sergeant dead.

  The vox was still going in his ear.

  “…Throne above! He’s killed him. Scav me, he’s only scavving shot the sarge…” The Harpine comms-officer wasn’t talking to Culcis anymore. The return was muffled and distant. He’d dropped the receiver cup and was pulling out his lasgun.

  Through the magnoculars, a ball of something cold and unpleasant growing in his gut, Culcis watched Jedion waste the comms-officer too. The man bucked, a ragged hole opened up in his chest and the lasgun went off. A stray shot capped one of the missile tube team across the plaza. In an audacious display of bad luck, the gunner fell and triggered the weapon.

  Culcis’ eyes widened as he followed the erratic trajectory of the missile, spilling contrails of smoke in a spiralling arc as it left the tube’s housing. It was headed straight for them.

  “Down!”

  Fire and thunder engulfed them as the missile struck rockcrete and pulverised it.

  For a moment, all Culcis could hear was a whining refrain in his ears like tinnitus. His vision blurred, his eyes watering with the smoke. Coughing up wads of black phlegm, he fought for his
bearings.

  Korde was dead, half of his torso a blackened ruin from where the blast had taken him. Varper’s eye was streaming blood and he’d lost his helmet somewhere in the explosion. Other than that, just cuts and bruises. When Culcis emerged from the clearing fog, he was still a little dazed. Drado’s voice came through loud and clear, his strong grip supporting his commanding officer and helping him back to his feet.

  “Those bastards! How dare they open fire on the Royal 50th!”

  He had murder in his eyes. Drado wanted to retaliate, but a choked command from Culcis stayed his hand. Something was wrong. The Harpine were struggling. More fights had broken out in the aftermath of the sergeant’s slaying. Jedion was down, but others were turning their guns on one another too.

  It was anarchy.

  Regara turned away to shield himself as Culcis was engulfed by the explosion.

  “Corporal, report! What by the Eye just happened?” he bellowed against the roar of the missile’s detonation.

  Speers was nonplussed. “Don’t know, sir. The Harpine…” his gaze tracked across the plaza to their allies, “…they just started shooting one another.”

  Captain Trador was moving out of cover to try and restore order. His bolt pistol was in hand and his command squad were in tow. The Harpines with the missile tube waited uneasily, unsure what they should do. Meanwhile, Jedion’s former regiment were tearing themselves apart.

  “This is unconscionable!” spat Regara, reaching for the vox cup offered by Crimmens. He was about to try and raise Trador when he noticed the glint of metal in one of the towers. There was no time to shout a warning before the Harpine captain and his men were chewed up by heavy bolter fire.

  In a few seconds the Harpine command was reduced to a visceral mist by the chugging cannon. Regara ordered retaliatory fire into the tower but it was too late and largely ineffective. The cultists were too heavily defended.