He had his plasma gun ready. He nodded.

She signalled to her sergeants. Move in. They moved to their own objectives.

Minka shuffled across the rockface to the side of the pillbox before her. Light spilled from the embrasure. The rockcrete walls were nearly three-feet thick, but she could hear the talk of the gun crew inside. The squat, stubby bombard barrel filled the embrasure. There was no cover on the barrel. The dull factorum steel gleamed in the wan light.

She signalled Orugi and Blanchez to go around the other side. This pillbox was template construction and she knew the inside as if she could see it. There would be a sunken gun chamber, grenade pit to both sides of the bombard platform, and raised dais at the rear, with guard chamber and magazine.

She crawled along the dirt to the rear entrance. The gunnery crew had left the door open for ventilation. A screen net hung across the door to keep the flies out.

She pushed the screen aside and stepped in.

The front chamber was empty and unlit. A padded cloth hung between them and the firing chamber. Yedrin slipped soundlessly inside behind her, but she waved him back in case the hiss of his flamer might alert anyone. Orugi was ready. Blanchez had ­already clicked her bayonet into place.

They could hear the grunt of the artillery crew as they winched a bombard shell into place and struggled to slam the round home.

Minka was as taut as a garrotting wire as she crept to the padded cloth screen. There was a little gap between the curtain and the wall. It was all she needed. There were five of them. She held up her fingers, and counted down from five, and then lifted her bolt pistol.

She caught Blanchez’s eye as if to say, watch, this is going to be messy.

The firefight was short, furious and completely one-sided.

The inside of the firing chamber was strewn with what looked like scraps of clothing. Minka knew it was shreds of flesh. The remains of the Guardsmen hit by bolt shots had been thrown backwards against the wall.

A heavy-set man, his body a ruin below the waist, was crawling for his gun. Blanchez shot him in the face. The las-bolt ricocheted off the rockcrete floor, coming back out of his skull with a hiss of steam, lit from within with the dull red light of a nearly spent round.

Another Guardsman – a middle-aged woman – was crawling towards the alarm rope. The lower half of her body looked intact, but she left a bright red smear on the ground. Minka pinned her down with a boot in the small of her back and fired, execution style, into the back of her head.

The bolt round decapitated the woman. From the severed stump of her neck, pints of blood flowed out in a great flood.