There was a sudden flash of yellow light. Minka cursed. She’d been hit by a spent round. It had rapped her knuckles and grazed her skin. ‘Just a scratch,’ she muttered and pumped another grenade down the corridor.

Blanchez was done. She set the timer as they scrambled away.

‘How long?’

‘Two minutes,’ Blanchez said.

‘Throne! This place is going to take half the cliff with it!’ Minka said. ‘Fall back!’

Yedrin and Orugi were already running to the stairs, but they ducked back into the room instantly.

‘Swabians!’ they said.

Minka looked about. The detonator was ticking. She had two choices. Up or down. ‘Up!’ she said and tossed two short-fuse frag grenades up the staircase. The blasts came moments apart. As she started up the stairs someone put their lasrifle round the corner and fired blind.

In response Minka hammered the shots out. Her magazine clicked empty and she slammed in a replacement. A few seconds later one of the enemy put his head around the corner and she nailed him.

She raced up the stairs, wild with adrenaline. ‘Come on!’ she shouted.

Another swung about, keeping low against the floor. She fired twice and hit him the second time.

‘They’re behind us!’ Orugi cursed as he limped behind her up the narrow stairwell.

Minka flipped the timer on her grenades. The first was short. The next two were longer. She just had to keep their heads down. Had to distract the hell out of them. No one was going to be searching for detonators when grenades were blowing up about them.

Five

FIVE

For months the traitors had relied upon the batteries in the upper circuits of Tor Tartarus to bolster their own defences. But this morning the upper batteries were silent, and in their confusion, panic spread through the traitor lines.

That moment of indecision gave the Cadians all the opening they needed.

Their charge was unstoppable. Within the hour all three battalions of Mordians, Cadians and Rakallions had broken into the lower levels of Tor Tartarus.

Explosions ripped through the upper stories. Whole sections of the fort collapsed and slid down the cliff-face, obliterating the ruins and wiping away all the cave mouths, tunnels and sandbagged gun nests.

The Cadians beneath renewed their assault. Bendikt led the charge up the freshly created rubble field. The traitor survivors were too scattered and stunned to offer anything more than a token resistance.

There was almost no one left to fight them. Within half an hour they had gained more ground than other regiments had taken with weeks of struggle and thousands of lives. Instead of digging in, they kept pushing forward.

For years the war’s advances had been measured in mere feet and inches and now the sudden movement threw them into confusion. The traitors pulled back in terror. Imperial troops swarmed forward, seizing the abandoned trenches and turning the guns on the fleeing enemy.