rolled and looked up. The new-born’s massive forelimb had grown, articulating out on extending metallic callipers, forming new pistons and extruded pulleys as it morphed its mechanical structure.
The monstrous thing struck at him again. The commissar flopped left to dodge and then right to dodge again. The metal claw cracked into the floor on either side of him.
Rawne, Larkin and Caffran sprang in. Caffran tried to shoot at close range but Larkin got in his way, capering and shouting to distract the machine. A second later, Larkin was also sent flying by a backhanded swipe.
Rawne hadn’t had time to load another barbed round into his lance, so he used it like an axe, swinging the bayonet blade so that it reverberated against the creature’s iron skull. Cable-sinews sheared and the new-born’s head was knocked crooked.
The machine-being swung round with its massive fighting limb and smacked Rawne away, extending its reach to at least five metres. Gaunt dived across the floor and came up holding Rawne’s barb-lance. He scythed down with it and smashed the Iron Man’s limb off at the second elbow, cutting through the increasingly diminished girth of the extending limb. Then Gaunt plunged the weapon, point first, into the new-born’s face. The blade came free in an explosion of oil and ichor-like milky fluid.
The monstrosity fell back, cold and stiff, the light dying in its eyes.
By then, six new demented new-borns had spilled from the STC’s hatch. Behind them, forty or more of the Iron Men had burst from their cages and were thumping forward. The others rattled their pens and began to howl.
‘Now! Now we’re fething leaving!’ Gaunt yelled.
Twenty-Eight
IT HAD TAKEN THEM close on four hours to find and fight their way in; four hours from the bottom of the chimney shaft on the hillside to the doors of the Edicule. Now they had closed the doors on the shuffling blue-eyed metal nightmares and were ready to run. But even with the simple confidence of retracing their steps, Gaunt knew he had to factor in more time, so in the end he had Rawne set the tube-charge relays for four and three-quarter standard hours.
Already their progress back to the surface was flagging. Domor was getting weaker with each step, and though able-bodied, both Bragg and Larkin were slowing with the dull pain of their wounds from the firefight. Most of their weapons had been dumped, as the power cells were now dead. There was no point carrying the excess weight. Rawne’s barb-lance was still functioning and he led the way with Mkoll, whose lasrifle had about a dozen gradually dissipating shots left in its dying clip.
Dorden, Domor, and Larkin were unarmed except for blades. Larkin’s carbine, still functioning thanks to its mechanical function, was of no use to him with his wounded arm, so Gaunt had turned it over to Caffran to guard the rear. Bragg insisted on keeping his autocannon, but there was barely a drum left to it, and Gaunt wasn’t sure how well the injured trooper would manage it if it came to a fight.
Then there was the darkness of the tunnels, which Gaunt cursed himself for forgetting. All of their lamp packs were now dead, and as they moved away from the Edicule chambers into the darker sections of the labyrinth, they had to halt while Mkoll and Caffran scouted ahead to salvage cloth and wood from the bodies of the dead foe in the cistern approach. They fashioned two dozen makeshift torches, with cloth wadded around wooden staves and lance-poles, moistened with the pungent contents of Bragg’s last precious bottle of sacra liquor. Lit by the flickering flames, they moved on, passing gingerly through the cistern and beyond.
As they lumbered through the stinking mass of enemy corpses choking the cistern, Gaunt thought to search them for other weapons, mechanical weapons that were unaffected by the energy-drain. But the scent of meat had brought the insect swarms down the passage, and the twisted bodies were now a writhing, revolting mass of carrion.
There was no time. They pressed on. Gaunt tried not to think what wretchedness Mkoll and Caffran had suffered to scavenge the material for the torches.
The torches themselves burned quickly, and illuminated little but the immediate environs of the bearer. Gaunt felt fatigue growing in his limbs, realising now more than ever that the energy-leaching affected more than lamp packs and lasgun charges. If he was weary, he dreaded to think what Domor was like. Twice the commissar had to call a