Fifteen Hours by Mitchel Scanlon

Author:Mitchel Scanlon
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2011-10-24T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

A Figure Moving Closer Through No-Man’s Land – Standing Watch with Bulaven – Matters of Gretchin and Human Marksmanship – A Splash of Colour Amidst the Wasteland – Lessons on How Best to Act as Bait

He had been moving slowly now for hours.

Crawling on his belly, painted from head to hind claws in grey clay with the long kustom barrel of his blasta wrapped in layers of grey sacking, he crept forward a centimetre at a time through the frozen mud of what the humies called no-man’s land. Slow, like a slaver hunting a squig with a grabba stik, he moved an inch and then waited. He moved an inch and then waited. He moved an inch then and waited. Over and over again, always careful in case his prey was watching.

Suddenly, seeing a glint in the distance ahead of him, he stopped. Sure one of the humies’ spotters must have seen him, he tensed, expecting at any moment to feel the pain from a lasbeam or hear the sound of a shot, but neither of them came. He remained motionless. Until, as the minutes passed and he became convinced he was none the worse for wear, his journey began again. Moving slowly, inch by inch, across the frozen mud toward his destination.

Finally, perhaps halfway across no-man’s land, he reached the lip of a shallow shell crater. For a moment he looked at it. Then, responding to some inner instinct he could have never named, he crawled inside. Out of sight now, he moved more quickly, crawling up the opposite slope of the crater to look through the sights of his blasta in search of a target. At first, nothing. Then he saw a head in a fur-shrouded helmet peeking out of a hole in the ground some way away and he knew the instinct had been right. He had found his kill.

Breathing through his nose, careful not to make any sudden moves that might spook his prey, he aimed at it through his sights, his finger tightening incrementally on the blasta’s trigger. As he did, he felt a warm sensation rush through his head as something like a clear and coherent thought occurred to him.

If he made this shot, the boss would be pleased…

‘You shouldn’t take it too much to heart what Davir said before, new fish,’ Bulaven said. ‘He didn’t mean anything by it. It is just his way is all.’

Bulaven was standing on watch on the firing step, looking out into no-man’s land with Larn beside him. Meanwhile, in the firing trench below them, the other men were mostly quiet. Wrapped in an extra greatcoat in place of a blanket, his muffler pulled forward to cover most of his face, Davir lay dozing with his back against some spare flamer canisters. Beside him, Scholar sat silently reading from the tattered pages of a battered and obviously well-used book. Only Zeebers was making anything much in the way of noise. Sitting on the trench floor, he could

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