as much line as you need, and lock off with the safety catch,’ El’hassai told me, as though this was something everyone should know. I tugged at the end, experimentally, and found the reel inside the little box ran free, without a hint of snagging or friction. A small indented switch near the hole snicked into place as I prodded it, and the whole thing locked up solid. So far, so good. ‘Releasing it again will rewind the cable automatically.’
‘That won’t be an issue,’ I assured him, fumbling the box around in search of something else to press. ‘How do I get it to stick?’
‘The flat side of the casing will adhere by molecular bonding if you activate the upper control, the pad at the end of the cable adheres if you activate the lower,’ El’hassai explained, with commendable brevity.
‘Got it,’ I said, parrying another mechanically predictable swipe from my lumbering opponent as I spoke, wondering how long my luck would continue to hold out. I slapped the flat side of the little box against the underside of the shuttle, convinced as I did so that I could feel the whole vessel shifting slightly under my hand[61], and squeezed the button El’hassai had indicated. To my vague surprise, it held[62].
Now for the difficult part. Pressing the second button, I swung the end of the cable, in an arc in front of me, whipping it back and forth in a figure of eight, using the cable to fend off the construct. As I’d hoped, it reacted at once, swinging the stump of its autocannon around to entangle the line, intending to reel me in to a messy encounter with its chainblade. Timing the movement exactly, I swung up my own weapon to deflect the blow, and rolled out beneath it, coming to my feet behind its elbow. Despite the temptation to get in a parting blow, I dug my toes into the rockcrete and ran as hard as I could towards my companions.
‘The shutdown procedure is still failing,’ Kyper said, sounding as disgruntled as possible with a mechanically filtered voice.
‘Then forget it. Just get the bloody door open!’ I snarled. Finding the unconscious tau in my way, and all too aware of the audience clustered around the door, I resisted the temptation to hurdle him and keep going, opting instead to stoop as I passed and grab an arm. Dragging him with me hardly helped my progress, needless to say, and I turned, expecting to see the servitor bearing down on me again. To my relief, though, it was right where I’d left it, anchored to the downed shuttle, well out of chainblade reach. I began to relax.
‘Be right with you, sir,’ a familiar voice said, and I was joined by Jurgen’s body odour, followed an instant later by the man himself. He took the tau’s other arm, which speeded us up nicely.
‘Thank you, Jurgen,’ I said, as we reached the locked portal. I turned, just in time to see the shuttle shift, with a loud groaning of overstressed metal and the shriek of rending hull plates. Then, almost too quickly to register, it had gone, vanishing over the lip of the abyss, dragging the servitor with it.
‘One thing I’ll say for you, Ciaphas,’ Zyvan said, after a moment of horrified silence, which was eventually broken by a reverberating boom from somewhere near the base of the spire. ‘You really know how to make an entrance.’
EIGHT
Needless to say, our spectacular arrival hadn’t exactly made a favourable impression on our hosts. Our reception was decidedly frosty, even by the woeful standard of hospitality usually enjoyed by guests of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
Once we finally got inside the spire, and not before time if my aching lungs were anything to go by, the contrast with the outside world was stark, to say the least. I’d been in enough Mechanicus shrines over the years to find the chill, filtered air, with its pervasive scent of ozone, volatiles, and charring insulation familiar enough, as was the over-abundance of polished steel surfaces and embossed cogwheels. The usual specimens of venerated mech-junk were scattered about the place, protected from the grubby fingers and mechadendrites of the curious onlooker by cases of meticulously-burnished glass, while the overly-bright luminators did their best to make the metal walls shine in an appropriately reverential manner.
Kyper and his skitarii hurried us through the labyrinth of corridors, which differed only in the arrangement of the technotheological knick-knacks littering the walls, as fast as they