have been there if I hadn’t invited him. I cracked off a couple of shots at the construct’s armour-plated back, with nothing more in mind than diverting its attention long enough for the pilot to get into the air, before bolting for the safety of the doorway. But even as I turned, the portal hissed shut, trapping us on the narrow landing stage. ‘Now what?’ I snapped, exasperated.
‘The machine spirits are sealing the spire in response to the weapons fire.’ Kyper said.
At which point the flaw in my plan became obvious. The servitor turned, ponderously, and brought its weapon arm around to point at me. ‘Hostile action initiated,’ it droned. ‘Retaliate. Retaliate.’
I jumped for my life as a line of autocannon rounds chewed up the rockcrete towards me, Zyvan and his aides scattering away from the line of fire like startled waterfowl, and rolled to my feet, cracking off another shot, hoping to hit something vital. No such luck, of course, anything vulnerable was tucked well away behind the armour plate.
‘Allow me, sir,’ Jurgen said, opening up with a burst from his lasgun. Predictably, it had little effect, although it did check the thing’s progress for a moment as it swung to let off a burst in his direction, which whined and ricocheted from the landing skid behind which he’d taken refuge. Then it turned back towards me, apparently intent on dealing with one thing at a time[54].
‘Requesting shutdown codes, authorisation Alpha Beige Zero Zero Seven Six Eight Cantata,’ Kyper said, apparently over some internal vox-link. ‘Urgency utmost.’ At least he was finally doing something, but unless he did it fast, it was going to be too late for me.
I dived aside again, chips of rockcrete from the near miss stinging my face, and came up facing the shuttle, just as the pitch of its engines rose to a scream. Brown fog swirled around my ankles, made turbulent by the backwash, and I ran towards the jammed ramp as hard as I could. It was a desperate gamble, but at the moment it looked like being the best of a lot of bad options, most of which were liable to end up with me dead.
‘Lifting now!’ the pilot called, and I leapt desperately for the rising slab of metal, feeling the edge of it slamming into my midriff, driving the air from my lungs (which, considering its quality, was probably no bad thing). At which point I became all too aware of the pistol in my hand, which rather precluded grabbing hold of anything else.
I barely had time to swear before I felt myself slithering back towards the lip of the drop. Flailing desperately, I managed to get a grip on one of the retaining bolts with my free hand, which left me dangling like a half-landed fish, while the panorama of the hive wheeled vertiginously below me. Why I didn’t simply let the laspistol go, I have no idea, but by that point I was probably too terrified to have opened my fingers if I’d tried.
‘Hold on, sir!’ Jurgen voxed, which struck me as the single most superfluous piece of advice I’d ever received. Then the servitor opened fire again, the heavy calibre rounds stitching a line of impact craters along the underside of the ramp, missing my wildly kicking legs by far too narrow a margin for comfort, and I divined the reason for his warning. Why it should have continued to take its spite out on the shuttle, instead of turning on my aide the minute it had a clear shot at him, I’ll never know, but it continued to target us with the single-minded vindictiveness of an ork[55].
‘Starboard engine hit,’ the pilot said, his veneer of professional detachment sounding thinner than ever, and the shuttle lurched sickeningly, almost dislodging my precarious hold. My shoulder muscles were screaming in protest by now, my arm feeling as though it was about to come free of its socket. A plume of thick black smoke, looking perfectly at home in what passed for an atmosphere around here, began seeping from the engine pod, whirling away to play with its friends rising from the furnaces so far below. If I fell, I’d probably be immolated before I hit the ground (or the roof of something, at any rate), which was hardly the most reassuring of thoughts. ‘I’ll have to set down again.’
Crushing me like a bug in the process. ‘Stay airborne!’ I yelled desperately, hoping to appeal to his sense of