I paused, changing cells in my carbine, and keyed my vox-link.
Thorn wishes aegis, rapturous beasts below/
'Aegis, arising, the colours of space/ came the response immediately.
'Razor delphus pathway/1 instructed, 'Pattern ivory!'
'Pattern confirm. In six. Aegis, arising/
Guards burst into the back of the shed, and Fischig blew them back out through the prefab wall with a wild burst of shots.
I looked around, and saw a stack of black metal boxes raised on a pallet in the corner of the shed. The paper labels were old and faded, but I prised off the lid of one box and confirmed their contents.
'Get ready to move/ I said, arming my second grenade.
'Oh shit!' said Fischig, seeing what I was doing. He was already half out the door as I placed the grenade on the top of the boxes.
We came out firing, met by a dozen or more guards who were sectioning the street looking for us. Most were pit guards in their black, ugly armour, but three were naval security troops in black cloth fatigues, no doubt part of the traitor captain's contingent.
We fired as we ran. The grenade was on a ten-second fuse. The fact that we ran through the midst of them caught them unawares. None of them was able to get a clean shot off.
Fischig and I dived headlong over a crumbling section of wall that had once surrounded North Qualm's market yard.
The grenade went off. And so did the stack of mining explosives it had been sitting on.
The Shockwave concussion flattened every wall for thirty metres. The upwards force of the blast, driving before it a blistering fireball, lifted the whole modular shed twenty metres into the air and sent the shredded remains of the structure crashing down onto neighbouring buildings.
Scraps of metal, cinders and shreds of burning flak-board rained down on Fischig and myself. There was a dazed silence broken only by the warble of alarms, cries of the injured and desperate shouting. The air was
fogged by ash dust. Pulling on our rebreathers, we stumbled through the murk.
I felt a jab of pain in my head. Deep, insidious, burning. Dazzo was reaching out with his terrifyingly potent mind, looking for us.
We stumbled through the smoke down an aisle between modular sheds whose windows had been blown out in the detonation.
The pain grew more intense.
'Eisenhorn. You cannot hide. Show yourself.'
I gasped as the pain took deeper hold.
Suddenly, it eased.
'Fischig! In here!'
I pushed him into an old stone outbuilding. I guessed it had once been a wash-house in North Qualm's more rural heyday.
Bequin was cowering in a corner, filthy, tearful. The sight of the Child of the Emperor Mandragore had sent her fleeing in blind panic. Like me, she had made the mistake of looking at the runes and marks on his foul, dazzling armour. Unlike me, she hadn't had the sense to look away.
She couldn't speak. She barely registered us. But we were back inside her muzzling aura and out of Dazzo's clutches for the moment.
"What now?' asked Fischig. They'll regroup quickly enough.'
'Midas is coming. We have to get back to the landing yard. It's the only area big enough for him to set down in.'
Fischig looked at me as if I was mad. 'He's going to fly into this? He'll be killed! And even if he does pick us up, they'll launch interceptors from the fleet. They'll launch them the moment he powers up for take off!'
'It'll be tight/1 admitted.
We dragged Bequin with us and moved out of the derelict wash-house. Outside, the settlement was still swathed in ash lifted by the blast. Fierce fires glowed in the smoke. Voices screamed orders and cygnids bayed. There was a deeper, furious bellowing too. I had a nasty feeling it was the Chaos Marine.
'Thorn attending aegis, main yard area/ I voxed.
'Aegis, main yard in three, the heavens falling/ So, they were on to him. The fleet had launched ships after the cutter.
We ran now. The smoke was slowly clearing.
A guard gang moved past us and we were forced to double back around. More guards blocked the next street.
'Through the buildings!' said Fischig.
We were behind a modular building, one of the newest and largest that Dazzo's unholy mission had set up. There was no door, but we scrambled up onto the low roof, pulling Bequin with us, and entered through a skylight.
