I didn't need to read his mind to see that he was only here for the potential fortune a few exclusive academic papers about the Ghiil discovery could make him.
'Hurry up!' I yelled at him. My back was getting tired and the blood in my mouth was back again.
Kenzer was hunched down at the base of the chasm side, fidgeting with his hand-scanner.
I called a halt and stomped back to him, my heavy boots, reinforced with the brace's metal frame, kicking up soot. Ironhoof, indeed!
I believed my greatest annoyance wasn't the brace-frame or its weight or the lumpen gait I was forced to adopt, not even the non-specific haemorrhage that was seeping into my mouth.
No, the worst thing was my cold scalp.
I really couldn't get used to it. Crezia had been obliged to shave my head in order to implant the cluster of neural and synaptic cables that would drive the augmetic frame around my legs. She had been upset all through the implant procedure. It really was terribly crude, even by basic Imperial standards. But out in the middle of nowhere at all, it had been the best she and Antribus could cobble together.
Needs must, as they say.
I was bald, and the back of my skull was raw, sore and clotted with the multiple implant jacks of the sub-spine feeds my faithful medicaes had installed to make my leg frame work. The steel-jacketed cables sprouted from my scalp and ran down my back into the lumbar servo of the walking brace. The bunched cables were flesh-stapled to my back, like a neat, augmetic ponytail.
I would get used to it, in time. If there was time. If there wasn't, what the hell did it matter?
I stopped beside Kenzer, throwing a hard shadow over him.
'What are you doing?'
'Making a recording, sir/ he gabbled. 'There's a marking here. The carved walls we've seen so far have been blank/
I peered down. It was difficult to bend.
'Where?'
He pulled a puffer-brash out of his kit-pack and blew the soot away.
There!'
A small spiral. Cut into the smooth face of the rock.
It looked like a tiny version of the chart we'd seen on Promody, or a really tiny version of the mazed surface of this planet.
'Record it quickly and move on/ I told him. I turned away. 'Let's go/ I called over my shoulder curtly.
Kenzer screamed. There was a flurry of las-fire.
I wheeled back immediately. Kenzer was sprawled on the floor of the gorge, ripped apart by laser shots. He was only partially articulated, such had been the point blank ferocity of the shots. The wide puddle of blood seeping from his carcass was soaking into the soot.
There was no sign of any attacker.
'What the hell?' Barbarisater was in my hand and had been purring, but now it was dull.
Nayl dropped close to me, his matt-black hellgun sweeping the area of the corpse.
'How in the name of Terra did that happen?' he asked. 'Lief? Korl? Upside?'
I looked back. Gustine and Kraine were walking backwards slowly, scoping up at the cliff tops of the gorge.
'Nothing. No shooters above/ Gustine reported.
I slapped my palm against the cold stone face of the gorge above the marking Kenzer had found. It was unyielding.
We moved forward, following the sweep of the chasm. Kraine was covering our backs. After we'd gone about fifty metres, he suddenly cried out.
I turned in time to see him in a face-to-face gunfight with two Vessorine janissaries in full carapace-wear. Kraine staggered backwards as he was hit repeatedly in the torso, but managed to keep firing. He put a burst of rounds through the face plate of one of the Vessorines before the other one made the kill shot and dropped him into the soot.
Nayl and Medea were already firing. The remaining Vessorine swung his aim and squeezed off another salvo, winging both Eleena and Nayl.
Then he walloped over onto his back as Kara's cannon ripped him apart.
'See to them!' I ordered, pointing Medea at Nayl and Eleena. Nayl had been skinned across the left arm and Eleena had a flesh wound on her left shin. Both kept insisting they were fine. Medea opened his kitbag for field dressings.
I looked at the corpses, Kraine and the Vessorines. Gustine appeared beside me. 'Where the jesh did they come from?' he asked.
