Hunting below the waterline of a voidship was the worst.

As an environment, it entirely favoured the hunted, possessing innumerable places to hide, and countless bottlenecks to funnel a hunter into an ambush. Add in multiple levels as well as the potential for traps laid by a cunning escapee, and you had an incredibly complicated, fluid environment that required a heightened form of spatial awareness.

Not that many of the broken souls who managed to break free were in any physical state to fight back, but it paid to be prepared.

Renn Duraki was Urdeshi born and raised, Militarum trained and equipped. He knew how to fight in steel mazes like this. He’d learned his craft as a Whiteshield in the bombed-out ruins of Orppus and Zarakppan; had honed those skills defending the multilayered structures of Eltath’s dynastic tech-claves, and storming oceanic promethium platforms.

A starship was never a place of quiet, but the Vociferator was louder than most. Its deck plates vibrated with the heartbeat of its engines, its bulkheads swelled and shrank under the awesome forces beyond the hull, and grunting, howling sermons wailed from the augmitters strung the length and breadth of the ship.

But below the waterline was something else entirely, where the heaving, mechanical guts of the vessel turned over with a thunder like the interior of a forge-fane turning out beaten metal for the war effort. Duraki’s ears would be ringing for days after this hunt.

Even over the grinding machine noise, he could still hear the sermons, as if they were conducted and amplified through the metal and grease of the lower decks. Not even the ship-borne vermin that lived in the bilges were spared its jagged cadences.

The noise made it impossible to track the prey by sound, but neither Duraki or Knox needed to hear their quarry. They’d hunted escapees in this part of the ship so many times they could navigate it blindfolded. They knew its every nook and cranny, the blind alleys, and each location where it might be possible to hide.

Duraki paused by an oil-slick stanchion, taking a moment to breathe.

He was exhausted, and had hoped to snatch a couple of hours of rest before Vraed sent him and Knox off to sort out his own damn fool mistake.

He clenched his fists and loosed a shuddering breath to let out his anger.

Not all of it. He lived on anger the way some soldiers lived on recaff or stimms.

It sustained Duraki, gave him a reason to keep fighting; a reason to hold on to himself.

His anger reminded him of who he was, or at least who he hoped he still was.

It was hot down here and the air stank of oil that had gone around the ship’s veins more times than any enginseer would certify as healthy. Yellow steam hung in sulphurous veils, and cloudy liquid trickled from the metal-grilled platforms above.

Knox drew level with Duraki and unclipped the leather mask from his helmet before bending his head back to let the moisture drip into his mouth. Droplets splashed his branded and tattooed skull, running down his cheeks like milky tears.

‘Don’t drink that shit, grox-brain,’ said Duraki. ‘Give you cancer.’

Knox spat. ‘I look like I care?’

‘I’ll remember that when your mouth’s lousy with lesions.’

Knox shrugged at Duraki’s prognosis and said, ‘So why the pause? You got something?’

Knox was a scowling veteran of Erinyes Secundus, and had fought in the final battles between Mater Heggerol and Lord Militant Caul. He’d lost an arm on the Last Day, and his augmetic replacement was a brutish clawed hand of hissing pipes and sinewy coils. Plated with carved bronze, it was hung with a skull he swore belonged to the man who’d tried to kill him that day.

Duraki didn’t believe that, but would never say so.

Knox had already killed two men who’d dared question the truth of his trophy.

‘Renn?’ said Knox when he didn’t answer. ‘Do. You. Have. Something?’

Duraki took another breath and shook his head. ‘No, but I know where he’ll be.’

‘Sub-deck Theta, behind the power relays?’

‘Yeah, they always run there. I suppose they figure it’ll foul an auspex.’

‘This one’s tough, Vraed says. Says he wants this one back alive.’

Duraki swore. ‘I swear he deliberately allows some of them to break free just to let them think that maybe, just maybe they’ve got a chance of escaping.’

‘Sounds like something Vraed would do,’ agreed Knox. ‘Says he maybe got a pistol too.’

‘Typical,’ sighed Duraki. ‘Letting a prisoner get hold of a weapon is just the sort of petty, cruel shit I’d expect from one of the Repudiators.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Knox. ‘Better for him now if he puts it in his mouth and blows the back of his head off.’

Duraki nodded in agreement; it had been Vraed who had taken his repudiation, and the Tongueless Man never let him forget it.

Since he didn’t fancy drinking the toxic condensate, he took a moment to unclip his Urdeshi-stamped canteen from his belt and take a drink. Common to water drawn from shipboard reservoirs, it was brackish with a metallic tang. He tasted particulate matter, but it was best not to think what that might be.

‘Vraed’ll be expecting us back soon with this one,’ said Knox. ‘We got no time for rest.’

That Knox was edgy at the thought of Vraed’s displeasure was new.

‘Since when do you care what Vraed wants?’

‘Just don’t want to be on his bad side, you know?’

‘Scared he’s going to put you on report?’

They both grinned, remembering a time when infractions would only result in something minor, like latrine duty or picking up brass on the hard-rounds range.

‘He’s spiky, you know? On edge and looking to spill blood. They all are. Like something big’s coming. Can’t you feel it?’ said Knox.

He glanced over his shoulder as he spoke, like someone might be listening to them over the din of clanking machinery and the droning sermons.

Duraki allowed that wasn’t an unreasonable suspicion. Besides, he had felt it.

Discipline aboard the Vociferator had always been brutally harsh, but now even minor misconduct was punished with lethal penalties. The atmosphere was thick with potential violence. Duraki felt it in his every shallow breath and shortened temper. And though he could only understand one word in three droning from the ship-wide augmitters, he sensed the strident, imminent nature of them.

Everyone in their berth-pit felt it too. Kezra wouldn’t shut up about it, kneading her fists against her temples and rocking back and forward. She’d whisper the same meaningless phrases over and over again, like the pitiful wretches whose minds had snapped in the hell of combat. Shanno wouldn’t stop crying, and even the normally unflappable Vaslov talked darkly of the coming campaigns, like he was a damn Lord Militant and not the former aide to a dead lieutenant.

Taliam clung to her company’s old vox-caster, forever tinkering in its guts, like she was ever going to pick up another signal. Once an enginseer, always an enginseer…

So, yeah, Duraki had felt the same thing, but what good would admitting it do?

‘Don’t worry your pretty little head, Knox,’ said Duraki. ‘We’ll get this one and bring him back, and if Vraed has anything to say about how long we took, I’ll take that knife of his and cut out his lungs.’

‘Sure you will,’ said Knox, clipping his mask back in place. ‘Come on, let’s find this stupid shit and get him back.’

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