At the chamber’s far end, a fuel tanker waited in a loading bay, cab doors open and engines already gunning, poised to trundle off down a long ramp towards an elevated viaduct. A transit-servitor, its back broken, lay in a pile by the wheels. Glav, a scrawny man dressed in a loose red jerkin, had already jumped down from the footplate to unscrew the tanker’s fuel line. Two more figures – big bodyguards, torsos bulked with stimms, one carrying a crackling electro-maul, the other a short-barrelled shotgun – lumbered towards Zidarov. The shotgun cracked out, and Zidarov scrambled for cover. He skidded behind the heavy body of a goods lifter, wrenching his shoulder against a jutting door handle, hearing the bullets ping and clang from the steel.

He swivelled back to his knees, shoved the Tzarina through a gap in the lifter’s segmented tracks, and fired back. Four rounds went straight into the shooter’s chest, puffing out plumes of blood as the man jerked and reeled. Zidarov jumped to his feet as the second bodyguard rushed him, swinging the maul in heavy lunges. More shots hit, winging him in the shoulder, then knocking him back, sending the maul bouncing over the lattice floor.

Zidarov slid fully out of cover, trying to draw a bead on Glav. By then the skinny gunrunner had disconnected the fuel line, spraying promethium all across the deck, and was sprinting back to the cab. Zidarov shot twice, sending both rounds wide and kicking sparks along the tanker’s hold.

‘Probator, Bastion-U!’ he roared. ‘Stand down, citizen!’

Glav leapt for the cab, getting one boot back on the footplate. Zidarov fired again, hitting him in the back. Instead of a wet impact, though, the bullet tinged off a hard armour-piece hidden under the jerkin. Glav staggered forward, missing his handhold and tumbling to the floor. As he did so, he managed to squirm round, bringing his own gun to bear. For a hideous split second Zidarov saw it aimed squarely at him.

Then Glav’s head exploded in a mist of red, followed immediately by the report of another gun firing. The gunrunner’s body slumped to the deck, twitched, then didn’t move again.

Brecht edged out of the open access hatch, his autopistol held two-handed, a look of studied concentration on his face.

Zidarov exhaled. ‘Holy Throne,’ he swore. ‘You really did run.’

The tanker’s engine was still growling. The discarded fuel line was still pumping, swilling the deck with liquid prometh­ium. Brecht stowed his weapon, splashed over to the valve and wrenched it closed. He was panting hard, his jowly cheeks flushed. He was a big man, dark-skinned, with a receding hairline and a frame that was a fair bit more substantial than it had been when he’d joined the enforcers. The flak jacket made him look even bulkier.