Corgan didn't stop to make sure Hale was attended to. He took advantage of the man's mistake and dived through the door. A short flight of steps led out onto the flat roof. Casting about he caught a movement in the corner of his eye.

He dived, rolling to his feet behind a ventilation hood with his assault las primed. Ducking quickly out and back he realised that they were gone.

The mercs had rigged a zip-line as their last ditch attempt at escape. At this end it was fixed to an aerial mast and it dropped diagonally over a crossroads to a lower roof some two blocks away. Corgan moved to the lip of the roof, lasgun barking, but they were moving too fast and were already out of range.

Looping his weapon over the line he gripped it with both hands and kicked off into open air. He heard Arines swearing and shouting behind him as he accelerated away.

The crossroads passed below him as he accelerated rapidly and unchecked down the line. Civilians and soldiers were visible moving through the area, the streets resembled nothing less than a kicked up anthill from this altitude. But he didn't have time to admire the view. The wind whipped at him, his shoulders protesting against the strain and his eyes watering. The rifle hissed and kicked up a trail of sparks from the friction of his reckless descent.

He started to wonder how he was going to slow down.

The mercs had stashed specialist equipment on the roof, allowing them to descend with a modicum of safety, breaking as they neared the opposite rooftop for a controlled landing. Corgan had nothing.

On the plus side, as the rearmost merc slowed down at the tail-end of his descent, it meant that Corgan's headlong flight could make up a lot of lost distance in the final seconds.

The trailing merc broke his fall. Having only just detached himself from the line and not seeing Corgan until the very last moment, he was still in a prime position to act as a living mattress.

Nevertheless, the impact winded them both. It was a good thing none of the man's friends had hung around to cover his back.

Corgan recovered first, he'd been braced for his landing. He put a hellpistol round through the man's knee and clobbered him over the head before haring off after the others.

A collection of planks bridged a narrow alleyway between this building and the next. He bounded over with an adrenaline rush buzzing in his ears. He leapt over a skylight, spotting the black-clad form of his next mark up ahead, weaving in between a forest of solar energy vanes.

Picking his route almost subconsciously he closed quickly with his quarry. The man turned at the last second, eyes wide in surprise as he realised it wasn't his buddy after all. His face froze eternally in that expression as Corgan's las-round passed between his lips and up through the roof of his mouth.

Corgan didn't even pause. Beyond the solar vanes the roof was flat and featureless, the gap between this building and the next had no bridge. Corgan stepped up and leapt on the run, arms cart-wheeling, time contracting around him, a single moment drawing out into a virtual eternity until the jarring impact of his landing shuddered up through his legs.

He rolled out of it, knowing that he would be nursing bruises for days, and came back to his feet running.

He barely evaded the concentrated fire of a concealed mercenary left behind to cover their escape. His hellpistol cracked again, a lucky shot drilling through the man's magazine and sparking off the caseless ammunition inside. The shooter's weapon exploded in his hands, putting him out of the fight.

Corgan drove onward, leaping another gap, heedless of the three-storey drop.

This building was still in the early stages of construction, at the edge of a large rejuvenation programme full of skeletal, half-built structures, piled high with building supplies and riddled with heavy machinery. Scaffolds wrapped in green, nylon mesh faced out the buildings and huge crane assemblies punctuated the urban skyline.

The floors were little more than concrete slabs that hadn't even been plumbed in yet. Ladders and cage-lifts provided access for the absent workmen. There were no walls, just steel uprights and cross-struts. Piles of flak board and rockcrete blocks waiting to be erected provided the only cover.

Shots rang out as Corgan leapt the gap and rolled behind a stack of rockrete blocks, bullets screaming like fighting cats as they ricocheted from the floor and steelwork. Corgan fired blind in the direction they'd come from.

He heard shouting and realised they'd turned at bay, seeking to use the layout of the building against him. What they didn't know was that Corgan had made his bones in the Underhive. If anyone had the advantage in this maze, he'd bet his last credit it was him.

He leapt from cover, diving into an area of deep shadow, piled high with building supplies and draped with tarpaulins. A ladder offered him access to the floors above or below, but he didn't take it. He slipped into a narrow crevice, hoisting himself up onto a large crate, and waited.

At least one of the frakkers must have seen where he went. With any luck he'd follow Corgan in without waiting for backup, but if not, Corgan was confident he could get the drop on multiple opponents from his hiding place.

The shadows below shifted, betraying the presence of one or more men just outside the darker environs. He could just about make out a murmuring. They were using micro-beads to co-ordinate their movements, now. That was bad. He'd have to try and create a little confusion to gain an advantage.

He slid towards the back of the crate, away from the ladder and the closing vice of his quarry turned hunter. Easing himself down he waited as his eyes became accustomed to the murk, then started to make his way through a narrow maze of gaps between the stacked up crates and supplies.

He found a box full of cadmium plated, hexagonal nuts, big, industrial sized things that weighed heavily in the palm. He put a handful in his pocket and moved on. Before emerging from cover he took a moment to scan what he could of the building beyond, listening hard for any sound out of place.

Nothing.

He crept out, doubling around to come up behind the man that had fired on him before. He'd put his pistol away and taken out a broad bladed combat knife, holding it reversed in his right hand.

The merc was hunched behind a stack of planks and iron scaffolding pipes, his gun trained on the darkness Corgan had disappeared into. Corgan crept closer, knife poised. The man's bead crackled and he responded to whatever had been said.

'Roger, flush him towards me and keep your head down…'

Poor sucker! Corgan grinned, plunging the point of his blade diagonally into the man's shoulder, severing his jugular and rupturing his trachea in one smooth, lightning quick motion.

He kicked the body aside, sliding his knife back into his boot and ripping the man's bead free. He secured this to his ear and knelt down in place of the dead merc, picking up his short-bodied machine pistol and making like one of them.

Bracing himself, he fired off a couple of bursts and shouted into the bead.

'He's breaking…'

'What… I don't see him?'

'Cover me,' Corgan replied. The other man charged straight through, cursing and swearing as he almost fell down the ladder shaft. In his desperate haste he could do nothing as Corgan opened fire, bullets ripping through his torso and putting him on his back.

Corgan sprang forward, his feet crushing the man's wrist before he could raise his weapon. He delivered the coup de grace, then displaced, finding a sheltered spot some distance from the two corpses he'd just made and pausing to try and calculate how many were left. Two dead before the rooftop chase, another five put down since. Either Arines' estimate of their numbers was way out or they'd hooked up with another group during the chase. Either way, he wasn't about to breath easy just yet.

The bead was silent. Most short wave micro-vox were extremely sensitive to other wave signals in the immediate vicinity. Even if they'd switch frequencies he'd probably pick up some interference. There was nothing.

He moved for the ladder, heading down towards ground level in a high state of alert. The ground floor was wreathed in deep shadow. The ground was uneven, not yet smoothed away, the pipes and electrical cabling still exposed in narrow rockrete trenches.

Corgan moved towards the light, keeping low, the merc's weapon gripped tight and ready. He started at an odd sound, like the warbling of a bird, and halted, scanning the shadows for any hint of movement.

'Just a bird, dammit,' he hissed, realising that he was feeling edgy as he hadn't for years. Something about this place wasn't right. Something about that sound was alien and out of place, here. He was starting to wish he hadn't hared off on his own.

Suddenly there was a movement in the corner of his eye.

'Thunder!' he cried, sweeping his weapon to the right and waiting less than a second before lighting up. The muzzle-flash caused sprites to dance before his eyes, momentarily ruining his low-light vision.

More movement off to his left, just as indistinct. He fired again, starting to get angry at himself for being so jumpy. He was giving away his position with every salvo and to cap it all he had no idea if he was even hitting anything.

The darkness writhed around him, something impossibly tall and stick-like rising up before him in a wave of blackness. His weapon was batted aside and something punched him in his solar plexus, knocking the air right out of him and putting him in a prone position as whatever it was that had attacked him loomed over him in the darkness.

Light reflected off a metallic, club-like weapon. This was the last thing Corgan saw as it flashed down towards his head.

xxx

The pursuit was fruitless.

Arines had rallied up the Orrax and spread them forward through the neighbourhood. Most of the mercs had bugged out, leaving myriad surprises behind them for their pursuers to find. Others were backed into corners and either died fighting or were rounded up.

Either way, progress slowed to a crawl. Every second mark was a civilian, meaning they really had to check their targets before firing. Casualties mounted and still there was no sign of the Major.

Shopal and Darron were co-ordinated two groups off to the south and west, Lita had a search party out to the north. Arines was lumbered with the remnants of the Praetorians.

Once Hale was stabilised he'd been loaded up onto a Chimera and sent back to the depot. His successor, a Sergeant Valint, had retrieved his unit's orders from the wounded man and was talking about continuing the mission.

'What are you talking about, man?' Arines argued. 'Half your unit is dead or wounded including your CO. I'd translate that as a catastrophic failure, wouldn't you!'

Valint drew himself up, his reason warring with his pride all across his features.

'Captain, you have the rank to order us home, but hear me out first. Since my regiment came here we've lost three thousand men to the war. We've had to induct nuggets into the ranks twice before today and will likely have to do so again in a couple of months. We've had precious little success and morale is at an all time low. But then you turn up and our latest embarrassment is averted, you have given me and my men the hope for victory. To send us home now would break us. Do you understand?'

'You'll never hold that fuel depot.'

'Alone, probably not,' Valint replied. 'But once we're in we can call up reinforcements and with your help we might just succeed.'

Arines sighed. He'd known what was coming, of course. He'd been a soldier almost all his life, worked his way up from the ranks twice over, albeit reluctantly in either case. But he understood the value of morale. Without it no army was worthy of the name, no matter how shiny their buttons.

'How far to the depot?'

'No more than a mile!'

'Alright. I'll give you a chance. We'll see you to the depot and establish a covert perimeter, but on one condition…'

'Name it!'

'You throw your damn pocket book in the nearest gutter and let my boys show you how to fight this kind of war.'

Valint took the little fabric-bound book from his jacket pocket. Within it were the bare bones of the Praetorian Rules of War, including tactical treatises that formed the heart of their combat doctrines. The sergeant had seen how useless they were, at least in this theatre.

He took a deep breath before tossing it down a sewer grate.

'These Praetorians are ready to learn a new method of war, Captain.'

Arines nodded and went to get his men briefed. He'd known since Fered Roathi that he didn't want to be regimental XO. But when Wolfe died on Gunga IV, who else was there to take up the mantle? Grein was the only other company commander even close to being capable, and Corgan would never let an ex-Arbite take the post.

And now his worst nightmare was taking form. The CO was off the map and the XO had to step up and take the reins.

'Take me back to Cassendaro,' he muttered to himself, shaking his head in weary resignation.

'Captain,' Wheln approached him from the side, self-effacing as ever, his mechanical voice breaking Arines reverie. 'The Argo teams leaders have all reported in. No contact. Do you want them to keep looking?' There was a desperate gleam of hope in the boy's eyes. He worshipped Corgan. But this was a military outfit and whatever trouble Corgan had cooked up for himself he'd just have to manage on his own. Benjamen Arines had a regiment to run.

'Call them off. I've got a job for them. Escabar will just have to find his own way home. Emperor save him!'

xxx

Lita felt oddly out of place without her heavy carapace armour. It felt somehow wrong to be wearing plain clothes over a lightweight armaweave flak jacket. She didn't really understand why. She'd worn the same outfit countless times during the Rogue ops they'd undertaken between Gunga IV and here. Somehow this was different.

'What's the word?' she asked, her vox-man shook his head.

'XO wants us to call off the hunt. He's given us a muster point and he wants us there at 0800.'

'Frak that! We're not hanging Escabar out to dry… get Pars over here.'

The weasel-faced smirk ambled over, his rifle couched lazily in his arms.

'You wanted to see me, boss?'

'How's your cash-flow, Pars?'

'Ticking over.'

'How'd you fancy a little windfall?'

'Depends on how dirty the job is.'

'I need you to go off mission….'

'Ooh, pricey!' Pars grinned.

'You'll be protecting your investment. Corgan makes us all a lot of money and I want you to track him down. Name your price!'

'Ten thousand.'

'Five!'

'Come on, I'm putting my neck on the line, that's worth at least eight!'

'Hah! Eight? You overestimate your own worth, my friend. Seven!'

'I don't even get out of bed for less than seven and a half…'

'Done!' Lita removed her glove and spat in her palm. 'You remember where the dead-drop is? I'll check it every other day. Leave me a note when you're ready to come back in and I'll square it with the Blacktop!'

Pars spat in his own hand and they shook to settle the deal.

'I'll be in touch.'

xxx

Sergeant Valint led the remnants of his company straight down the Via Colliarus, using parked up vehicles, rubbish receptacles and low walls for cover. He'd arranged the twenty-four survivors into fire teams of six, overlapping in threes. With the Orrax moving through the adjacent buildings and securing the flanks, they were making good time.

Sporadic fire rippled towards them, but nowhere near as concentrated or organised as it should be. They were being harassed, but not enough to dent their newfound determination.

When the depot came in sight it was less than a hundred metres distant. That was when the fire came down with a vengeance.

The enemy had dug in deeper than a Ridniam Blood-tick with hard-points housing heavy calibre weapons. Rockrete barricades had been erected around the perimeter with makeshift roofing made out of corrugated iron.

'Get the mortars set up!' Valint barked, though he didn't see them making much of a dent on the enemy positions. 'Grenade launchers, lay down some smoke… assault teams to me!'

The company's new organisation was based loosely on the Orrax set up. Half the teams were equipped to engage the enemy at medium range with mortars and grenades launchers. The others were tooled up to get up close and personal. Each team had a flamer operator and everyone was armed with frag grenades. They were the bloody infantry that would advance under covering fire from the other four squads before holding to allow the ranged squads to displace behind them. Until now they hadn't had a chance to put it into practise, but this was their opportunity.

'Alright. There's plenty of cover for two teams to move down the far left. If we skirt right the other two teams can move up through that row of gardens. Use the smoke and hold your fire until you hear my whistle. Let the rest of the boys take all the flak, got it!'

These men had been handpicked for this. They were the staunchest, most battle-hardened men he had to call upon. These were not nuggets he was talking to, but veterans, hard-nosed, hard-faced, heavy-handed bastards who wouldn't spit on you if you were burning.

They'd known for months now how useless the Praetorian methodology was in this theatre. Now they were finally getting to employ tactics that had a chance of being effective. It was the herald of a new lease of life for a stagnant regiment.

'Alright, boys, let's get this done. I'll see you on the other side!'

xxx

Arines watched the Praetorian sergeant from a distance. He'd kept his men in a standoff position, watching the flanks, keeping the fledgling unit safe as they advanced. Now it was time for their trial by fire.

Many of them had seen combat before, but none of them had been allowed to fight it properly until today. He'd help Valint organise the men he had left, tutored him vaguely on how to deploy them and then let slip the budding war-dog.

The sergeant waited until the curtain of smoke was thick and impenetrable before moving right with two fire teams. The depot guns fell silent, the mercs manning them knew it was futile to keep shooting. They knew it was better to conserve ammo. They'd spend the next few moments preparing a response to the inevitable assault, stripping out overheating barrels and making sure their weapons were fully charged. They'd probably even move up a few counter-assault squads to hamper the Praetorians. But whatever they did, they'd be ready.

Unconsciously, he crossed his fingers behind his back.

xxx

Valint vaulted a low garden wall and hunkered down behind it as the rest of his two squads charged in behind him, taking up defensive positions and preparing to leap into the next garden.

The smoke screen was still billowing thickly across the enemy positions. The guns were still silent. The scene was like something out of a dream or nightmare. Eerie silence had settled over the street like a death shroud.

'Move up!' he hissed. Garrath led his team over into the next garden while Valint and the other squad covered them. As Garath settled in behind the next barricade Valint brought up the rear, rolling over and moving up.

Suddenly and silently, coalescing out of the smoke like marsh wraiths, humanoid figures loomed out of the ether.

'Open fire!' Valint bellowed, not even hesitating, confident that these were hostiles.

Two of the silhouettes went down, others dove for cover. The return fire sent stone chips flying but the Praetorians were ensconced in their hard cover.

'GO! GO! GO!' Valint bellowed, lifting his whistle to his lips and giving three loud blasts. The eerie silence was broken. The usual snap-crack of discharging lasguns was strangely muted by the smoke and the bellowing war cries of the Praetorians sounded lost and forlorn.

Valint felt his heart shudder in his chest, a moment's uncertainty entering his thoughts.

Then he was up and over the wall, hot on the heels of his men, lasrifle clenched at hip height.

The wall of smoke dissipated behind him as he came out the other side and leapt a rockrete barricade, gunning down an unfortunate merc before charging deeper into the depot. His men had taken up cover positions behind large-bore metal pipe-work and were cracking off rounds into the interior. Behind them a tangle of bodies lay strewn across the barricades.

The chatter of a heavy calibre automatic rang loud in his ears, cutting two of his men down before his own eyes.

'Get a grenade in that nest!' He bellowed, indicated the source of the gunfire.' Six seconds later the weapon was silenced, the gunner hurled from his makeshift pillbox by the concentrated frag detonation. It had claimed another life by that time.

'Keep pushing!' Valint cried, lifting his whistle once more to call in the rear-guard.

As the platoon pushed in under the depot's canopy they were met with a concentrated fusillade of solid rounds. Three more men were blasted from their feet and had to be dragged into cover.

'No grenades!' The depot was a fuel storage facility. Small arms fire shouldn't do too much damage but a little composition B could go a long way in such confined spaces. Valint was extremely conscious of the fact that they could all be blown sky high if they were even a little careless.

'Sir, I think you should see this,' said Garath, indicating a compact device strapped to one of the canopy supports with metallic bands. Blinking red lights and multicoloured wires rang into and out of a square wad of plastic explosives.

'I reckon this whole facility is rigged to blow, sir…'

Valint swore!