The stairs wound out of sight below them, the platoon spread about thirty feet down. Minka had to wait until the foremost were almost upon her.

She held up her fingers and counted them down from four. On her command the Cadians leapt around the corner.

The cries of the Jackals filled the air. The note in their howls was at first startled, then appalled, and finally they cried out in fear and pain. The Cadians gunned them down with a ferocious salvo of las-fire on full auto. The Jackals did not get a single shot off in reply. They tumbled back down the stairs, knocking each other over and coming to rest on each of the landings, their heaped bodies crumpled against the walls.

Minka held her hand up for silence. Far down the stairwell someone called up in alarm.

‘What is happening up there? Heh!’

The Cadians did not move. Step by step they heard someone advancing up the stairs. Minka started to slide down the side of the wall, looking to get a shot off, but the dead Jackals had tumbled out of sight, and as the investigating trooper came to the first dead body there was a low curse, and then shouts of alarm from the bottom of the stairwell.

‘Right,’ Minka said. ‘They know we’re here. No choice now. We have to keep up momentum!’

Minka went first. While the external walls of the Lone Redoubt were heavy cast rockcrete, inside the bastion the internal partitions were fashioned from carefully dressed stone. They passed long side chambers with triple-bunked cots set end to end along the wall. Mess halls were filled with mattresses, stacked weapons, ammo crates.

They could hear the shouts and screams of battle in the levels about them. They had no idea whether the traitors were holding the Cadians back, or if their fellows had forced an entry.

At the next chamber Minka scanned the piles of clothes and bags for any hiding inside. The young trooper, Yedrin, fired bursts into each of the rooms. The bedding kept burning as they pressed on.

Baine was first round the corner. A wide flight of stairs plunged down. Minka slid over the banisters, landing in a crouch, pistol ready. She pulled a grenade off her webbing, slid her finger into the loop, put her back to the wall and slid along. Baine and Asko were with her, carbines raised.

There was a door at the end of the corridor. Minka stopped at one side of the doorway and signalled for the other two to be ready. Baine kept his eye on the trench while Asko stepped up behind Minka. She lifted the latch and pulled.

The door creaked open, and Minka fired three shots into the darkness. It took a second for her eyes to become accustomed to the gloom inside. There was a ladder leading straight down, a table of wooden ammo crates, a heap of discarded clothes.