[26]

I moved the chairs, trying to be quiet and keep my eyes on the door. They were bad concealment and no cover at all against bullets or las. But anything is cover against a webgun. The room was corner-fed from the long axis. I put the chairs in the corner along the wall with the door, the place that you see last as you cross the threshold. I dragged Naomi's body to the same corner, then I hid behind the chairs. I checked the pistol. I hadn't trained on the model, but the controls were obvious enough. The charge indicator read 12 on standard intensity. I toggled it to low power and the indicator showed 30. The guards didn't wear armor. I practiced using my thumb to switch, in case I wanted to shoot through cover. I aimed at the door.

I breathed deep and slow until my aim was swift and steady. I prayed for mercy for Naomi's soul. I asked the Emperor for confusion to my enemies and begged Him to guide my heart to kill.

"Guard!" I shouted. "Guard!"

A few seconds later they came inside. The second had crossed the threshold before the first had checked my corner. They had their webguns up. I shot one twice in the chest. The other oriented on me and fired. The web-shot burst over one of the chairs and knocked it spinning across the floor. I shot him four times. The first one was down, but moving, so I shot him again.

A laspistol is quiet compared to a bolter, especially on low power, but it's still a gun. Without my helmet muting the sound I was already half-deaf.

I cleared the angle of hallway visible through the open door. I could vaguely hear shouting. I grabbed the un-webbed chair and went to the door. I thrust the chair through. Something snatched it out of my hand from left to right and I heard the thump of a webgun from my left. I didn't think I would overpenetrate on low power, and I didn't care. The only friendlies were to the right. I held the pistol around the corner to the left and fired four or five blind shots, then leaned out. I saw a guard on the ground. I shifted my aim down at him but something hit my shin and knocked my leg out from under me. A webshot from his gun, I realized later. Lasfire cracked over me just as I fell. I shot the guard on the ground next to me. Another shot from behind me came close enough to burn my hair.

I rolled over and engaged the other shooter. He was in the doorframe of the prison room. The man who watched us when Naomi was away. I missed four or five shots but it suppressed him. I knew I must be running out of ammunition, and I had uncleared space to my back, where the card game had been. At least two more shooters back there. The door was closed but if I waited for someone to open it, I was dead. And there were the two uncleared rooms on my right.

I grabbed a webgun and switched the laspistol to my left hand. My leg hurt and was immobilized by the web but I didn't think anything was torn or broken. I lurched up and staggered towards the prison door, firing with the laspistol until it clicked empty just to keep my man suppressed. I dropped it to get both hands on the webgun.

The man in the room had changed levels to a low crouch when he leaned around the doorframe with his pistol, but he must have been as deaf as I was and hadn't heard me moving. I shot him with the webgun from less than three meters. It hit his arm and spun him around. I pumped the action and shot him again. I stumbled into the room and dropped to the ground out of sight of the door. I shot the man twice more, which emptied the webgun magazine but let me take his pistol without a fight.

I closed the door. The man had the keys to the cage. I hobbled over and unlocked it. I gave the pistol to Verity. I was in no shape to be on point.

Tara took the empty webgun. She said, "Marisa, are you bleeding?"

"I don't think so." I had Naomi's blood covering my back, but I hadn't been hit.

"Ration bars," she said. Smart. I loaded my pockets from the box.

Verity opened the door and began working the angle to control the hallway.

Tara found a folding knife on the immobilized man. She slid it to me and I started sawing at the web. I tried to count up what I had done.

"Naomi dead," I said. "Four men dead. No—three, and that one." The man I had shot with the webgun might die from internal bleeding eventually, but he was still breathing. "At least four more enemies. Two laspistols at least. The two close doors aren't clear."

"First two doors still closed," said Verity. "Third door open. Long axis door closed."

"Ammunition?" I said.

"Twenty-one shots on low," Verity answered.

I didn't get the webs off, but I freed my knee enough to be able to run.

I asked for suggestions. Verity asked if the webguns up ahead were still loaded.

"Yes," I said. "On my command we push up to the third door. Verity, you have long security. Tara and I are rear security against the doors."

We moved. We passed the two doors. Then Tara and I had loaded webguns. Four shots in mine, five in hers.

Our position was terrible. Getting out through that stairwell would probably kill us even if all they had was the two laspistols. They could sit at the top until a well-armed response team arrived with body armor, long-guns, grenades, gas. And there were the two uncleared rooms at our back.

I resolved to solve that problem first. I had Verity hold security on the door at the end of the hall, keeping the pistol, our best weapon, on the known threat. Tara and I would work on the two doors between the interrogation room and the cell.

Both proved to be locked. We burned another two minutes searching guards until we found a set of keys.

One room turned out to be storage. No people. No obvious weapons. We moved on.

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I shoved the other door open and moved back away from the threshold as I got my hand back on my webgun. There were gasps and cries. Tara shouted "Don't move! Don't move!" Then I covered the room from the other side of the frame with my own gun up.

It was a clerical workspace. Desks, chairs, paper everywhere, typography machines, an old cogitator terminal in a haze of incense smoke. There were six people. They didn't seem armed. One of them was bent and seemed to reach behind a desk. I shot her, the web round expanding enough over the short distance to engulf her torso and arms and slam her back against the wall. She slumped down, retching and moaning. I pumped the action.

"Don't move!" I yelled. They cowered but mostly complied. We took the room, forcing them back into a corner. I tossed papers aside but they didn't have a single map in view. I saw an intercom terminal on the wall. There wasn't a weapon where the woman had been reaching.

I asked them where we were, what the building was. After some threats and shoving one of them said we were in Sanok township, and that Sanok was about two hundred kilometers from Velgrad. And this was the old Manakal building.

"Hab?" I asked.

"No, light industry."

"How many stories? How many people?"

"Two stories. Twenty, thirty, forty, I don't know!"

"Use the intercom. Tell them we are dead. Tell them the Battle Sisters are dead, and—wait. Not yet."

I changed my mind. I wanted to check the supply room for weapons and I wanted to take the room at the end of the hall first. I left Tara guarding the prisoners.

The supply room didn't have weapons. It was full of old office supplies and rusty spare parts. A stack of old chairs. A sewing machine. There was an ammunition box, but it was full of mismatched screws.

Verity and I set up on the last door. I opened it. It scraped and I had to shove it hard. They had knocked the table over and propped it up as a barricade. No one was inside. Cards and coins littered the floor. There was an open tin of sweets on the counter. I aimed my gun at the door to the stairwell. Verity checked the toilet room. She said, "Clear."

The card players must have retreated upstairs.

With Verity covering the stairwell door, I went back to Tara. The compliant man got to stay. I made the rest of them go to our cell and locked them in. Maybe I should have killed them, but we didn't have ammunition to spare and I don't know if I could have done it with a knife.

I realized we had a set of handcuffs and leg irons. I got them out of the puddle of blood in the other room and put them on the man. Then I told him again what to say to the intercom: that the Sisters were dead, but Naomi was bleeding and they couldn't make it stop. He didn't want to say it. I think he was more upset about the lie than the betrayal. I threatened to kill him and find someone else to do it. He did it.

We set our ambush in the break room. Verity at the door to the hall. Tara in the toilet room. Me behind the overturned table, which I pulled into a corner.

They led with two men with carbines, light body armor, and grenades. I could see a little of their movement through a crack in the table. They moved well, clearing the dead corners and pushing up through the room. I held my breath. They didn't like the two open doors any more than I would have. One of them called for a third, and another man came in a few seconds later. He pointed his gun right where Verity would emerge. The other two went towards Tara. I stood up from behind my concealment and shot the third man with my webgun as soon as I saw the barrel over the target. The web clipped him, but he was still in the fight. The other two swung towards me as I worked the action and turned to the next threat. I didn't see Verity but the air in front of me was suddenly strobed with lasfire as she shot the man I had shot. I didn't see Tara, either, but one of them pitched forward, engulfed in her webshot. The last of them was swinging his gun up and around, bullets spraying wildly. My webshot took him in the face and he pitched backward, still firing.

Rounds ricocheted from the ceiling. I felt a sharp pain in my abdomen and I thought I was shot. Verity was in the room, repeatedly shooting the webbed and half-webbed enemies. I turned my gun back to the door.

Tara was rushing the door, her webgun held in one hand, a grenade from one of the men in her other. "Frag!" She flung it through the door and slammed the door behind it. Even through the thick steel of the door the bang rocked me and stole my hearing. Dust sifted from the ceiling. The tin of sweets fell off the counter and spilled all over the floor.

The pain in my abdomen wasn't a bullet. It was a huge splinter of wood stuck an inch or two into me. I pulled it out. Blood didn't flood out after it.

We took the carbines, ammunition, and three more grenades. They had no vox units. No time for armor, boots, or a close search. We spent another grenade on the stairs. We scrambled up over a mangled stretcher and two mangled bodies. We gave the interior door a grenade to keep them busy. There was an exterior door. We opened it onto a cracked sidewalk, ten meters of yellow wasted grass, and a low perimeter fence with no razor wire on top. Fifty meters beyond the fence there was forest.

"Can you climb?" I asked. They could.

We fled, alternating cover and move. We saw a street, an autocar-repair wayshrine, someone fleeing the sound of gunfire. We crossed the fence, ran to the trees, and kept running. I hoped that they didn't have dogs. All of our feet were bleeding from the shrapnel on the stairs. I remember being terribly afraid of how easily they would catch us if they had dogs.