Salvation's Reach

EIGHTEEN The First Cut

The shrieking of the Hades drill was becoming unbearable. Gaunt felt as if his teeth were about to shatter. The atmosphere in the lateral holdspace was thick with exhaust fumes and the reek of burning metal and oily water. A fine vibration, transmitted through the deck by the drill, was making everything tremble.

He retreated to just outside the hold hatchway so he could hear Beltayn over the vox.

‘Major Baskevyl reports six companies deployed at the primary zone,’ Beltayn said. ‘More coming in, but it’s tight.’

‘Have they kicked the door in and made a lot of noise?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Beltayn.

‘Opposition?’

‘Loxatl. Now Major Kolea reports contact with what he believes are Sons of Sek.’

Gaunt took a deep breath. Loxatl made his skin crawl, but Sons of Sek were something else. The anarch’s rumoured response to Gaur’s Blood Pact. Sworn soldiers, cult devotees of the Ruinous Powers, yet disciplined and organised. Zealot warriors. Gaunt felt a particular type of fear whenever the Archenemy appeared to operate with intent. Their unpredictable insanity was bad enough. But for the Blood Pact, the Sabbat Worlds Crusade would have been prosecuted and done years before.

‘Keep me appraised,’ he said.

He suddenly realised the drill had shut up.

‘We’re through,’ said Mkoll.

Gaunt walked back into the hold. Servitor crews were pulling back the protective baffles. The troop company of Strike Beta was on its feet.

Gaunt waved the lead team forwards. Mkoll, Domor, Larkin and Zered. Each one carried the tools of his trade. They buckled on rebreathers and adjusted lamp packs.

The chief artificer was staring at Gaunt, waiting.

Gaunt took the vox horn from the set operator.

‘This is Strike Beta,’ he said. ‘Be advised, we are beginning insertion. Hull is breached, repeat, hull is breached.’

‘The Emperor protect you,’ Spika’s voice replied over the link.

Gaunt nodded to the chief artificer. The man turned and beckoned urgently with both hands. With a mechanical grumble, the Hades backed into the hold again, treads clattering on the deck. Its retreat unplugged the hole it had bored, a huge tunnel in the hull of the Reach the size of a decent hatchway. The edges of the cut were bright silver metal, whorled and flaked like shredded foil. Approaching, Gaunt could see the cut was under four metres deep. Cold and undisturbed air leaked out towards him from the darkness inside, like the slow bleed of heat from a tomb.

Artificers and servitors were fussing around the hole with tanks of sealant.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Gaunt.

‘The edges will be razor-sharp in places,’ replied the chief artificer, ‘hazardous to touch. We are preparing to seal them with–’

‘No time,’ said Gaunt. ‘We’ll just be careful.’

The artificer’s crew backed off.

Mkoll and Domor led the way, and Gaunt fell in behind them with Larkin. Zered brought up the rear, his flamer lit.

Gaunt drew his boltpistol. Larkin carried the old solid-round rifle he had been training with. His longlas was in its cover across his back.

Mkoll stepped forwards into the gloom, lasrifle ready. Beside him, Domor adjusted his headphones and extended the sweeper broom of his detector set. Gaunt could hear the sweeper’s little portable auspex ticking like a radiation counter.

They advanced down the cut, through the bored hole, carefully avoiding the razor-sharp sides. The skin of the hulk was dense and thick. Light from the hold winked off the milled and sawn edges of the tunnel.

Beyond lay darkness and silence.

They moved slowly. Even by Mkoll’s wary and calculated standards, they were being cautious. Gaunt’s eyes slowly began to adjust to the gloom.

A greyish half-light was revealed ahead of them, a dusk. They were coming through into a cavity that had the dimensions of a hold space, but none of the regularities. The ceiling sloped down at one end. This wasn’t a space that had been designed, it was a chamber that had been partially crushed into its current shape: the internal compartment of one of the ancient vessels that had fused to form the Reach, deformed by slow gravitational pressure.

The deck was uneven. Panels had popped their rivets and sat like displaced flagstones. Cables, ancient and powerless, hung down from busted roof plates. The air was ominously dry. Gaunt noticed that Zered’s flamer began to suck hard, and the trooper had to adjust the mix rate to compensate for the oxygen-poor atmosphere.

Domor swept steadily to and fro, passing his broom across the walls and low ceiling. Gaunt could see the blue glow of his set’s display screen. The ticking was steady.

‘Anything?’ he asked.

‘I’m calibrating,’ said Domor. ‘There’s a lot of bounce. So many different densities and intermixed alloys.’

Gaunt didn’t envy Domor’s task. A quick look at the walls and ceiling showed extraordinary levels of gross compaction, with structural fabric and mechanisms crushed along with circuits and energy filaments into scrap filler. Getting any meaningful discrimination through the auspex was going to be a challenge.

‘Steady,’ said Mkoll. They climbed over a fallen beam and ducked around a fractured metal arch, the remains of some giant hatch, which stuck up out of the mangled deck like a broken tooth. Mkoll waited while Domor scanned both, and marked them with yellow chalk as items to be cleared from the route. Beyond the arch, the compartment seam had ruptured open like a scar. The metal looked molten. Through the rupture lay a service-way.

They went through. The service-way was long, and only slightly deformed. It was wide and high enough to drive a cargo-6 along. It had been built for humanoids, but not by any human. Curious designs along the wall sections had been defaced and over-marked by Archenemy sigils.

‘This area’s in use,’ said Mkoll. ‘The dust on the deck shows footprint scuffs. Not recent. I’d say six months, though environmental conditions are so stable, it could be six years.’

‘Or six hundred,’ said Larkin.

‘They come this way often enough. They didn’t like looking at these markings,’ said Domor, nodding at the defaced walls. ‘They scratched them out, changed them.’

‘Or altered them to leave instructions of their own,’ said Gaunt. ‘Like “Keep out”. Check the deck. Wires, anything.’

Mabbon Etogaur had been quite specific about the ways in which the extremities of the Reach were protected. No wards or warp magic, no infernal devices or daemonic mechanisms. Anything like that might be too easily triggered by the sensitive study and development being undertaken at the facility.

At the Reach, the Archenemy was relying on good, old-fashioned mechanical booby traps: mines, explosives, lethal anti-personnel defences.

Domor scanned ahead, adjusted his settings, and then did it again.

‘Nobody breathe,’ he said. ‘I’m getting something now. The deck plates ahead are hollow. Wait… yes, feth. I’ve got cables, active-fluid hydraulics and an electric charge. We’ve got a pressure trigger. The deck’s live.’

Mkoll pulled a scope that matched the one screwed to the top rail of Larkin’s rifle. The chief scout put it to his eye, and Larkin raised his weapon, hunting.

‘Cable wire comes out eight metres down, to the left,’ said Domor.

‘I see it,’ said Mkoll. ‘That look like storage drums to you?’

‘In the alcove?’ asked Larkin, squinting through his rifle scope. ‘Yes, it does.’

‘The sniffer’s getting fyceline and promethium gel,’ said Domor. ‘About a tonne volume.’

‘Throne,’ said Zered, genuinely appalled.

‘Detonator?’ asked Gaunt.

‘Looking for it now,’ said Mkoll, training his scope. He had it set to low light. ‘Got it. I see the trigger pin. The cable’s cleated up the wall along the bulkhead seam. It goes in at the top of the left-hand drum.’

‘Yes, I see it,’ said Larkin, aiming.

Gaunt wondered if they should back off. The target was tiny and the light levels were poor, but eight metres was comfortably within Larkin’s effective range. If the shot failed, and the device detonated, no amount of shelter or cover would save them. A tonne of fyceline compound explosive would create an overpressure blast in the confined environment that would suck through the narrow apertures of the compartments, pulp their internal organs to soup and their bones to jelly, and probably burst the improvised atmosphere seal between the Armaduke and the Reach. Even the rest of Strike Beta, waiting in the later hold, would probably be killed by focused atmospheric concussion.

Hiding in cover when Larks took the shot might make them feel better, but it would have zero practical safety value.

‘Let’s get this done,’ said Gaunt.

Larkin knelt on one knee, settling his position, shaking out his shoulders. He chambered a single saline round, slammed it home, and then took his aim. Mkoll crouched beside him, and activated the passive tagger on his scope, so that the pencil-thin light beam indicated the precise target. As shot caller, Mkoll wanted to make sure he and Larkin were both appreciating and agreeing upon the same exact spot.

‘Got it,’ said Larkin, locking up his scope.

Domor lowered his broom and murmured a silent prayer. Zered hooked his flamer head to his waist belt and, to Gaunt’s amusement, put his hands over his ears.

‘None of you were actually planning on living forever, were you?’ Larkin asked.

He took the shot.

There was a dull, distant boom. It was muffled, but big. It resounded through the thick, deep hull of the Armaduke.

In preparation seventeen, a dingy cargo hold space, Blenner heard it and looked up. Some of the Ghosts around him had also noticed the noise.

‘What the hell was that?’ asked Wilder.

Blenner looked at Ree Parday. She’d been looking pale ever since they’d kitted up earlier in the day.

‘Go ask, would you?’ he asked.

Perday jumped off the wheel arch of the Tauros where she’d been sitting and ran towards the main hatch.

Blenner looked around the chamber. Three companies of the regiment, including the marching band, had been placed as combat reserve under the command of Captain Obel, with Captain Wilder as his second. In full combat gear, they were standing to in the hold space ready to deploy as required. They had eighteen Tauros assault vehicles ready and laden with spare munitions, with further re-stocks prepared on cargo pallets. If the word came, they could deliver munitions by truck down the Armaduke’s main spinal to either of the lateral holds, and even cross into the Reach via the bore holes to support Strikes Beta or Gamma. Alternatively, they could transport the munitions to the main excursion to reload the Arvus lighters and other drop ships if Alpha needed reinforcement or replenishment.

The reserve unit was edgy, mainly because they were the only part of the regiment not directly deployed. Obel was sour – he’d drawn the duty by lot, and he wasn’t happy about it because he’d been hoping to lead J Company in with the Alpha run.

No one, especially Blenner, was surprised that the band had been grouped into the reserve section. If anything, Wilder was more pissed off than Obel. J Company had pulled an unlucky duty. Wilder’s mob hadn’t even been entered into the lottery. They’d been put in reserve, the assumption being they were only worth deploying in the fight if it was really necessary.

Blenner didn’t care. Waiting to fight was his kind of war, and he had no wish to see the band company trying to prove itself, even though it really wanted to. The results were likely to be messy and ultimately disappointing.

Blenner also wasn’t surprised to see that Gaunt’s boy, Chass, had been placed in reserve. That must have been a damn hard call for Gaunt. He wouldn’t have wanted to be seen to be showing any kind of favour, but how could he throw his son into the line when he was seriously undertrained? That was the card that Gaunt had played in the end, to justify his decision. Felyx was not yet certified at basic. His place had to be in reserve.

Sitting alone at the far end of the hall on the tow-bar of a Tauros, Felyx Chass looked even more unhappy about the arrangements than Wilder. Maddalena lurked nearby.

Perday returned.

‘Something explode?’ asked Blenner brightly.

‘It was the main airgates opening on the excursion deck,’ Perday said. ‘The first of the lighters are returning for restock. They want us to start shipping munitions down for loading.’

Blenner got up.

‘We’ve got a job to do at last,’ he called out. ‘Let’s look lively!’

Larkin’s shot was perfect. The frangible saline round punched clean through the firing mechanism, shattering as it did so and drenching the trigger circuit with a desensitising flood of salt water. It was anticlimactic: a little puff and a spatter of water.

Mkoll and Domor edged forwards across the decking. The rigged plates shifted and there was a click, but the pressure trigger was no longer connected. They approached the stacked drums, Domor sweeping for secondary triggers.

Once he reached the drums, Domor put down his broom, pulled on a pair of leather gloves, and dismantled the shattered trigger mechanism, gingerly sliding the core up out of the socket in the drum top. He tied off all the bare wires, taped them to prevent conduction, sprayed the interior of the socket with inert gel and insulated the internal plugs with petroleum jelly.

‘Safe as it’s going to be,’ he said.

Gaunt nodded. Mkoll marked the drums and the surrounding floor plates with red chalk to indicate a bomb made safe but still dangerous. They moved forwards. All of them had stripped off their clumsy rebreathers, preferring the mineral stink of the Reach’s dry atmosphere.

The service-way broadened. Domor’s scans detected a cavity ahead of them. Gaunt could feel cold air moving against his face.

The service-way ended in a hatch, followed by a brief section of some other corridor that had been brutally severed in some ancient time. Beyond that, the ground dropped away in a deep ravine, a metal chasm lined with compressed junk. A ragged metal bridge with partial handrails crossed the gap.

On the far side, there was a landing space, and then several spurs of corridors or tunnels.

‘Wait,’ said Domor. His auspex clucked every time he swept the bridge.

Mkoll got down and peered.

‘Big charge,’ he reported. ‘Halfway across the span, wired underneath.’

‘You see the trigger?’ asked Larkin.

Mkoll had his scope out. ‘Yes, but it’s a really bad angle. It’s facing away from us. I think it’s hooked to the bridge walkway. Motion detector.’

‘Let me look,’ said Larkin. He’d already reloaded. He got down on his belly at the lip of the chasm, and rolled on his side to squint along the underside of the bridge. He had to take his longlas off and hand the cased weapon to Zered because it was getting in the way.

‘Nice,’ he said. ‘Lucky I’m so good.’

He started to ready his rifle. He was sprawled in a position that looked both uncomfortable and less than ideal for marksmanship.

‘Let me tag it for you,’ said Mkoll.

‘Don’t bother,’ said Larkin. ‘Just hold onto my legs and stop me rolling, or I’ll fall right off this fething ledge.’

Mkoll knelt down and physically braced Larkin’s body. The marksman had to lie almost flat with his rifle under his chin and a foreshortened grip supporting the barrel. It was the posture of a stage contortionist. Gaunt felt his pulse rate rise again.

The rifle cracked, the sound of the shot echoing oddly down the gulf below them, a small sound in a vast space. Gaunt saw the impact, the spray of glass-like shards from the round casing, the mist of saline droplets.

‘Blew it clean out,’ said Larkin, getting up and ejecting the brass. He was collecting his cases, putting them in his pocket.

Sweeping as he went, Domor edged out across the bridge, checking for secondaries. From the look on his face, the metal structure felt none too secure. Cold air kept breathing up from below in gusts, as if the vast and crushed structure of the Reach were respiring. Each gust of cold air turned their breath to steam.

Domor lay down on his front, reached under the bridge, and disengaged the dangling firing pin. It was wet from the shot. As he brought it up, it slid from his fingers and fell away into the depths.

Everyone realised they were holding their breath.

‘It’s fine,’ said Domor sheepishly. ‘We didn’t need it.’

Reaching down again, he squirted gel into the pin holder and the wiring junctions. Mkoll marked the bridge with red chalk.

They crossed the bridge. It looked precarious, though Gaunt guessed it would probably take a light vehicle. Ahead of them, past some clutter and scrap metal, lay the three spurs. One was another service-way, the second led through into a dank vault that seismic action had split into three different levels. The third turned right and joined a rusted gantry that crossed a sunken chamber full of rotting and long-dead machines.

‘Charges in the roof here,’ said Mkoll, indicating the second service-way.

‘Clear them,’ said Gaunt. ‘I’ll drop back to move the rest in. If we’re getting alternative routes, we need guidance.’

He started to walk back towards the borehole. Larkin began lining up on the third device.

Gaunt used his link to signal to Strike Beta. The first few units met him in the service-way.

The first clearance team to follow them in was led by Criid, with Leyr as scout and shot-caller, Banda as marksman and Mklaek as sweeper. Their flamer was being lugged by Domor’s adjutant Chiria. The second was led by Mktass, with Preed as scout, Raess as shooter and Brennan as sweeper. Sairus came in support with a flamer. Gaunt gave them instructions to proceed, and to link with Mkoll’s squad before dividing to open up the alternate access points. He underlined the need for caution, discipline and constant vigilance.

They listened carefully, and then moved up.

Sergeant Ewler appeared next, leading in the first of the combat troops from A and K Companies. Ezra was with them, and so was Kolding, carrying a medicae pack. Curth, as acting chief medicae, had insisted on riding with the Strike Alpha deployment, where the highest casualty rate was anticipated.

Behind them came the Suicide Kings.

Rawne had allowed Mabbon to lose everything but the manacles. The foot shackles had gone. Around the pheguth, Varl, Bonin, Brostin and the others stood ready.

‘How far have you got?’ asked Rawne.

‘Not far, and three devices disarmed already,’ replied Gaunt.

‘That’s good,’ said Mabbon.

They looked at him.

‘It’s what I would have expected,’ he explained, ‘so it suggests things haven’t changed much since I was last here. Also, it suggests that they’re relying on unmanned defences for these layers of the Reach.’

Gaunt nodded. This had been Mabbon’s assertion all along. The main Archenemy strengths guarding Salvation’s Reach were positioned around the primary docking areas and facilities. Subsidiary levels of the colossal structure, most of them unused, and many of them uncharted, had been mined and booby-trapped then left as unpatrolled deadzones. The Archenemy expected any significant attack to come from the front, which was why Gaunt had sent Strike Alpha in to knock on the main door and attract as much attention as possible.

The Archenemy did not particularly anticipate anyone having the patience, discipline, skill or technique to cut through the hull of the Reach and attempt an insertion through the mined levels. Even with the requisite levels of skill and discipline, such an undertaking would still be doomed to failure.

Unless you also had inside information. Unless you had reasonably accurate experiential data that told you where to cut, where to insert, and what to expect when you did.

Unless you had an etogaur of the Sons of Sek.

‘Let’s move forwards,’ said Gaunt. ‘Show me the way you’d take.’

They headed back in, overtaking the waiting troop advance and crossing the bridge. Mkoll’s squad had begun to clear a significant distance along the second service-way, neutralising three more devices in the time it had taken Gaunt to backtrack and lead the rest in. Criid’s team had begun to disarm bombs in the split vault. Mktass’s team was crossing the corroded gantry into the chamber full of dead machinery.

‘I think your man Mkoll has the best idea,’ said Mabbon.

‘He usually does,’ Gaunt replied. ‘It’s a gift.’

He turned to Rawne.

‘We’ll follow Mkoll’s team, but the other two routes may be viable. Let’s divide the troop force here and spread out.’

‘Maximising our chances?’ Rawne asked.

‘Minimising our losses,’ Gaunt replied.

‘Strike Beta is deployed,’ said Beltayn over the vox. ‘Full strength inside the Reach structure, though moving slowly.’

‘Understood,’ said Daur. He was pacing in frustration. The drill was taking forever to make the second cut.

‘Can’t they increase the rate?’ he asked Major Pasha.

She shook her head.

‘They say it would burn out the cutters,’ she replied.

‘It’s burning out my patience.’

She laughed, but there was a serious look on her face.

‘Please try to stabilise your mood, captain,’ she said. ‘Once we’re inside, we’re going to be moving through an environment loaded with improvised explosive devices, most on trembler or pressure switches. Patience is going to be our greatest virtue.’

‘I know, I understand,’ Daur replied. ‘But if we don’t cut in soon, we will be badly behind schedule. If Strike Beta reaches an impasse or hits opposition, and we’re not advancing as an alternative, then this mission is going to be a failure.’

‘Sometimes missions are failures,’ said Pasha. ‘That’s the nature of war.’

‘Forgive me, no,’ said Daur. ‘I mean no disrespect, and I understand a decent officer needs to keep a philosophical perspective on such matters. But you haven’t served with Gaunt before. You need to appreciate what he expects.’

Major Pasha frowned and nodded.

‘I also believe,’ said Daur, ‘that when a mission is this critical, it can’t be a failure.’

Nearby, behind the baffles and bombarded by the hideous screech and rattle of the working drill, Merrt rubbed at his neck.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Maggs.

‘It’s… gn… gn… gn… wearing off,’ said Merrt.

He’d shot the numbing agent into his jawline when the drill started up, so he’d be ready to take a shot the moment they were through. But the drill had been cutting for almost forty minutes, and the numbness was ebbing away.

‘You got another?’ asked Raglon.

‘A couple. Three I gn… gn… gn… think.’

‘Don’t waste them,’ said Maggs.

There was a sudden bang from behind them.

‘What the–?’ asked Merrt.

‘I think we’re through,’ Nessa mouthed.

‘You sure?’ asked Questa.

‘We’re through. We’re through!’ Hark called, ushering the strikeforce back to position. ‘Ready, now. First team up and ready!’

Major Petrushkevskaya was to lead the first clearance team. Her days in the scratch company had taught her plenty about booby traps and bomb disposal. Nessa, Zel, Marakof and Raglon moved up with her. Raglon had the sweeper broom ticking ready. Nessa checked her antique rifle. Marakof, one of the new Verghastite scouts, took a deep breath and winked at Major Pasha. They’d served together on the Zoican War and knew how one another worked. Zel was another influx Verghastite, hand-picked by Pasha. He jogged over to join them, his flamer lit.

‘Steady and wait,’ Pasha told her clearance squad. The artificer crews were removing the baffles and protective screens while the drill team prepared to disengage the drill.

‘Hurry it up,’ cried Daur. ‘Places, please! Major Pasha, you’re up first. Pollo, you’ll follow them in when I give the word. Then Haller, your team. I repeat, clearance teams first! Commissar Hark, if you please. I know we’re all eager, but get the troop elements back out of the way. We need room to move!’

Hark barked some orders and herded the waiting troop sections back. Haller traded knuckle slaps with the members of his squad.

Daur turned to look at the drill.

‘What’s taking them so long?’ he asked Pasha.

‘The artificer there says the cutting teeth have bitten in, caught on something,’ she said. ‘They’re just freeing it.’

The drill was attempting to retract from the deep socket it had bored. Something had snagged the cutting head. The engine was revving hard, coughing up puffs of sooty smoke. The operator was engaging the cutting head for quick screaming bursts, forward and reverse, trying to tear free so that the insertion could begin.

‘Oh, come on!’ Daur cried in exasperation.

Whatever flaw or imperfection, whatever ultra-hard seam of adamantium or ceramite in the hullskin had been snagging the drill-head, it finally and abruptly gave way. The Hades lurched backwards violently, its cutting head squealing across the inner surface of the borehole. The operator had just shifted the rotation into reverse again.

The brutal release threw the drill operator off his station onto the deck. Racing, the power-cutters scythed sideways into the rim of the borehole and sheared away a large chunk of hyperdense metal, which it shredded into razor-fine fibres and slivers and ejected backwards into lateral hold thirty-nine.

The flying metal shards blew back with the penetrative force of a dozen loxatl flechette blasters. There were no longer any protective baffles around the cutting site.

One flying shard decapitated an artificer. Another two tore clean through the torso of a servitor. Other whizzing scraps struck the deck and the roof.

The rest ripped into the clearance teams waiting to go in.