Minka had the same feeling. It was as if they could sense the enemy all about them, hurrying to isolate them.

They moved forward into a large storage chamber. It was filled with crates and bedding.

One of the troopers shouted, ‘They’re behind us!’ She dropped to her knee, firing rapidly.

More Swabian Fusiliers had followed them down. At the same moment a body of thirty Jackals came at them from the other side, suddenly full of courage and screaming treacherous war cries. Vlada was hit in the throat. Yedrin was too slow in getting down. Minka had to grab his legs and wrestle him to the floor as a spray of las-bolts occupied the place where he had just been.

‘Block the doors!’ Minka shouted. ‘We’ll make a last stand here!’

Baytov had been fighting with the Cadian Storm Troopers for thirty years. The 101st relied on their armour. It was a long time since he had been required to mount a foot assault of a position like this. But he, and all the other Cadians, had drilled incessantly for exactly these kinds of situations. One thing Cadia did not lack was the ruins of defensive fortifications. The landscape was dotted with deserted bastions and kasrs, wrecked or abandoned in long-forgotten wars.

Some had been sites of heresy, declared excommunicado by the Inquisition, others retained exactly for training purposes. So this assault was like a training mission.

Assess the strength of the defences. Lay down suppressing fire. Charge.

As Baytov prepared the forces, Diken came forward. The one-eyed veteran had carefully watched the fire.

‘It is not held strongly,’ he said. ‘I assess no more than fifty defenders. And they do not have much heavy weaponry.’

‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Baytov said. ‘Why wouldn’t this ­position be held more stoutly?’

Diken paused and took in all the evidence he had seen from the fighting so far. ‘I guess that the last thing Holzhauer expected was this push. All the troops we have fought so far are the Jackals. Those, and a handful of Swabian Fusiliers. And whoever was commanding here appears to have been as third-rate as their troops.’

Minka’s troops were desperately resisting an attack on all sides. Only Yedrin and his flamer kept the enemy back. And within a few short minutes, the pressure on his flame thrower began to slow, the fire coming in spluttering spurts. ‘We’re running low!’ Yedrin cursed.

‘Anyone find another tank?’ Minka shouted.

Baine scrambled about the storeroom, yet he found nothing but case after case of hard slab.

As the flame thrower gave a last gasp, Minka tossed Yedrin one of the Fusiliers’ lasguns. ‘Here!’ It was a triplex variant. Minka kept her head down behind a crate of slab and briefed him quickly. ‘There’s three settings. Standard. Precision. Hot shot.’