on his leathery, narrow face. With an oath, he turned and began to run back the way he had come.
The two guards thundered after him with baying blood-cries. They’d gone ten metres before the shadows behind them unfolded and Ghosts emerged, dropping stealth cloaks and seizing them from behind. Mkoll, Baru, Varl and Corbec fell on the two Jantine, struck with shock-poles and Tanith blades, and dragged the fallen men into the darkness off the main hall.
‘Why am I always the fething bait?’ the returning Larkin asked, stopping by Corbec, who was wiping a trace of blood from the floor with the hem of his cape.
‘You’ve got that kind of face,’ Varl said, and Corbec smiled.
‘Look here!’ Baru called in a hiss from the end of the hall. They moved to join him and he grinned as he pulled his find from the corner of the archway the Jantine sentries had been watching. Guns! A battered old exotic bolt-action rifle with a long muzzle and ornately decorated stock, and a worn but serviceable pump stubgun with a bandolier strap of shells. Neither were regular issue Guard pieces, and both were much lower tech than Guard standard-pattern gear. Corbec knew what they were.
‘Souvenirs, spoils of war,’ he murmured, his hands running a check on the stubgun. All soldiers collected trophies like these, stuck them away in their kits to sell on, keep as mementoes, or simply use in a clinch. Corbec knew many of the Ghosts had their own… but they had dutifully handed them in with their issued weapons when they’d come aboard. He was not the least surprised that the Jantine had kept hold of their unrecorded weapons. The sentries had left them here as backup in case of an assault their shock-poles couldn’t handle.
Varl handed the rifle to Larkin. There was no question who should carry it.
The weight of a gun in his hands again seemed to calm the old sniper. He licked his almost lip-less mouth, which cut the leather of his face like a knife-slash. He’d been complaining incessantly since they had set out, unwilling to be part of a vendetta strike.
‘If they catch us, we’ll be for the firing squad! This ain’t right!’
Corbec had been firm, fully aware of how daring the mission was. ‘We’re in a regimental feud, Larks,’ he had said simply, ‘an honour thing. They killed Lonegin, Freul and Colhn. You think what they did to Feygor, and what they might be doing to the major. The commissar’s asked us to avenge the blood-wrong, and I for one am happy to oblige.’
Corbec hadn’t mentioned that he’d only selected Larkin because of his fine stealth abilities, nor had he made clear Gaunt’s real reason for the raid: distraction, misdirection – and, like the Jantine, to promote the notion that was really happening aboard the Absalom was a mindless soldier’s feud.
Now, checking the long gun, Larkin seemed to relax. His only eloquence was with a firearm. If he was going to break ship-law, then best do it full-measure, with a gun in his hands. And they all knew he was the best shot in the regiment.
They edged on into the Jantine barrack area. From down one long cross-hallway came the sounds of singing and carousing, from another, the clash of shock-poles in a training vault.
‘How far do we go with this?’ Mkoll whispered.
Corbec shrugged. ‘They killed three, wounded two. We should match that at least.’
He also had an urge to discover Rawne’s fate, and rescue him if they could. But he suspected the major was already long dead.
Mkoll, the commander of the scout platoon, was the best stealther they had.
With Baru at his side, the pair melted into the hall shadows and swept ahead.
The other three waited. There seemed to be something sporadic and ill-at-ease in the distant rhythm of the ship’s engines as they vibrated the deck. I hope we’re not running into some fething warp-madness, Corbec mused, then lightened up as he realised that it may be Gaunt’s work. He’d said he was going to distract and upset the captain.
Baru came back to them. ‘We’ve hit lucky, really lucky,’ he hissed. ‘You’d better see.’
Mkoll was waiting in cover in an archway around the next bend. Ahead was a lighted hatchway.
‘Infirmary,’ he whispered. ‘I went up close to the door. They’ve got Rawne in there.’
‘How many Jantine?’
‘Two troopers, an officer – a colonel – and someone else. Robed. I don’t like the look of him at all…’
A scream suddenly cut the air, sobbing