Free Deathwing by Neil & Pringle Jones

troopers. From above, a dozen heavily modified jetbikes gave covering fire. The enemy had broken through.
    Nipper checked Sal’s filter mask. It was still completely in place. Good. He unclipped some med-plas from his belt and sprayed the wounded area.
    ‘That should kill any spores,’ he muttered, watching the plasti-flesh congeal. He hoped the disinfectant and fungicide worked better than the last lot or Sal was in for a painful death.
    ‘I mean it, Nipper. Go! If you’re still here when the rebels come, they’ll—’
    ‘No can do, Sal,’ he said. ‘You know the code.’
    She looked up at him and smiled in spite of her pain. ‘The Marauders look after their own. Nipper, we’re not back on Thranx and this isn’t a streetfight.’
    He shrugged. ‘Hey… If we don’t look after each other no one else will.’
    Suddenly Sal’s face went slack. He knew she was in listening trance. A moment later intelligence flooded back into her face.
    ‘Borski and Krask have the rest of them about two hundred metres back. They’re heading for the old comms hutch. Go the way I tell you. I think we’ll have a clear path.’
    Nipper nodded. ‘Can you run, Sal?’
    ‘I’ll have to.’
    Just before they made the break she turned and looked back towards the oncoming enemy. An expression of fear passed across her face.
    ‘By the Emperor, they hate us so,’ she said. She and Nipper ran. From behind came the sounds of sporadic firing as the rebels mopped up the last of the opposition.
    ‘W E ’ RE ON OUR own,’ Borski said, with a certain grim satisfaction. He looked like a man who had just found a big enough challenge to measure his faith against. He cut the comm-link with HQ. Lieutenant Mikals cried out in agony.
    Wonderful, Nipper thought, looking around the old Harvesters’ cabin that some dead tech-adept had converted into a communications nexus. It had a familiar homey look. He had grown up surrounded by machinery, not giant plants. For a moment he felt home-sick for a place far beyond his ability to measure distance.
    He slumped wearily down on the hard bench. He was tired, as much from the brief firefight as the night of marching that had followed.
    He didn’t want to think about that nightmarish journey through the green. He had had to partially carry Sal while keeping alert for any threats from the surrounding forest. Once he had almost been ensnared by a dreamspider’s web. Several times he had nearly fallen through the carpet moss to swamp-side thirty metres below. Twice he had to hide, frozen with fear, while rebel scouts filtered by. It had taken them what felt like forever to reach the comms hutch.
    He looked around at the few survivors of A Company. He saw Borski, the sarge, Lieutenant Mikals, Truk. There were few familiar faces from the old days when the Devil’s Marauders had been a streetgang in the worldcity of Thranx. That had been before the Raising when they had been fierce and desperate enough to be inducted into the Imperial Guard.
    By the Emperor, there had been nearly a hundred of them then. Now there was only himself and Sal, Hunt, Glyn, Маk and Colquan. His friends had changed. They still wore their gang colours but they had been incorporated into the uniform of the guard. The only real sign of their former allegiance was the huge devil head on the backs of their combat jackets. They still had the old face tattoos but the faces themselves were thinner, gaunt and haunted, patched with scars. Hunt had a bionic eye visible under his face mask. Маk had an arm of plasteel and servomotors.
    A palpable air of demoralization had fallen over the room. All the others are dead or in the hands of rebels, Nipper thought. He didn’t know which was worse. Mikals whimpered in agony.
    ‘No chance of any support?’ Krask asked. The sarge looked more tired than any man had a right to be and still be alive, Nipper thought. He had carried the terribly wounded Mikals all night on his own.
    ‘None,’ Borski