The Swabian held the knife low, ready to swing into an overhand or underhand stab. Minka feinted once and then twice. He came forward with an uppercut to her guts. She stepped to his outside, knocked his forearm away from her, pinned it against her side and raked his face with the other hand. Her fingers were like claws as they found his eyelids and eyeballs and he dropped his knife in an effort to get them off his face. She was already moving, one leg wrapped about his, and a shove with all her strength flung him out over the parapet and down the rockface.

She watched him hit the cliff once, twice, three times. He did not shout as he fell, but he grunted with each impact, a low, painful, bone-crunching sound. After the last one he bounced out into the air, arms and legs spinning, and disappeared from view.

‘Well done, lieutenant,’ Blanchez said. She had a cocky manner about her, as if to say that she could do better.

‘Thank you,’ Minka said. ‘Next one is yours.’

All across the top of Tor Tartarus, Seventh Company were sprinting into the battle. Some had scrambled down the support tower. Others had rappelled in, and even as Minka tore a bloody swathe through the enemy, reserve units were still hauling themselves across the wire and forcing toe-holds wider and deeper.

This was what it meant to be a Cadian. They were shock troops, elite warriors trained to drive deep with sudden raids of extreme violence and commitment.

Sparker led three squads straight into the gatehouse. They came in over the sandbag walls and found that the building was being used as a barracks for off-duty artillery crews. There were hundreds of them. Swabian Fusiliers, by the looks of it.

Most of them were asleep, shattered after a long night of artillery duels. Each soldier had a little pile of belongings, their helmets laid by their bed with what was left of their rations inside. The conditions were dirty, dank and squalid. They slept where they had fallen the night before, on heaps of old artillery sacking.

Frag grenades landed among them before they knew what was happening. The explosions were deafening. Many died in their dreams. The rest woke terrified and confused. There were shouts as a few grabbed for improvised weapons, but they were met with a searing hose of liquid promethium. Fifty died within seconds. Their bedding caught fire and reels of thick, oily smoke ripped out along the low rockcrete ceiling and then vented upwards.

Lieutenant Petr found a squad of about twenty traitors on guard duty who had stopped into an old hab-block for a warm brew. They were sitting round a cast-iron stove, watching a kettle slowly boil, chins resting on hands, leaning against the walls, oblivious, it seemed, to the massacre beginning around them.