Titanicus (Warhammer 40,000) by Dan Abnett

Author:Dan Abnett [Abnett, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2018-08-08T14:08:48+00:00

1010

She came round in pitch blackness, sat up sharply, and banged her head.

The atmosphere was airless and she could smell burning. Blind, she reached around and felt a sheet of metal pressing down on her. There was very little space underneath, which was why she’d banged her head against it trying to sit up.

Panicked by both the claustrophobia and the fear of being trapped and burned, she pressed her hands against the metal and shoved hard.

The metal sheet slithered away with a clatter and stale daylight shone in on her. There was smoke in the air.

She pulled herself out of the hole, digging her way out from under a mountain of tangled metal and machine parts. Unsteady, she rose to her feet and staggered away across the strewn debris. Gorge Orewelt’s heart had been crushed flat by the falling giant. Even though it was lying flat on its face, the smoking wreck of the engine towered over her. Columns of dirty black smoke spewed lazily from the ruptured heat exchangers on the rear of its hull.

Coughing, Cally retraced her steps and began to search the area where she’d been half-buried. Golla Uldana, her face painted with blood, was curled up in the churned earth under a broken sheet of flakboard. She blinked up into the pale light as Cally lifted the sheet away.

‘You saved me,’ she whispered.

Cally shook her head. ‘I didn’t. I don’t know how this thing missed us.’

She helped Golla up.

‘You cut your head,’ said Golla.

‘So did you.’

Golla tried to touch Cally’s scalp.

‘Leave it. Leave it alone.’

‘It’s nasty.’

‘Something hit me. Leave it.’

‘Are we the only ones alive?’ asked Golla.

‘I think so.’

‘We should look.’

Cally nodded.

They clambered through the fuming wreckage for a while, moving pieces of fused debris and hoping they wouldn’t find anything underneath, but they did.

They found Ranag Zelumin, or at least the top half of him. Something hot, heavy and metallic had severed him below the sternum. They couldn’t look at him for long.

‘Oh Deus,’ muttered Golla.

‘Golla! Over here!’

Golla scrambled over to join her. Janny Wirmac was curled up in a ball at the foot of a ruined wall. She was miraculously intact.

‘Janny?’

‘Is it over?’ asked Janny Wirmac.

‘For now, yes,’ Cally told her.

‘Samstag? Samstag? Is that you?’ Voices echoed through the smoky air. Golla and Cally looked up, and saw figures picking their way across the debris field towards them.

Reiss had made it, Iconis too.

‘Mister Binderman?’ Cally asked.

Bohn Iconis shook his head.

Lasco appeared, his nose broken and blood trickling from his ­shattered teeth. Zhakarnov clambered into view, sucking on a lho-stick. Lars Vulk and Antic followed him.

‘What the frig was that like?’ Antic asked.

‘Oh, shut up,’ moaned Vulk.

Braniff, it turned out, was gone, lost under a roof collapse along with his damn picts. Wolper had been mashed under the falling engine. Vulk had also seen the red-haired woman, Sasha, killed, virtually evaporated by a las blitz. Robor and Fiersteen had survived. The two members of Activated Twenty-Six whose names she’d never known had died too. Cally felt even more guilty about not knowing their names.

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