It looked like a tiny version of the chart we'd seen on Promody, or a really tiny version of the mazed surface of this planet.
'Record it quickly and move on/ I told him. I turned away. 'Let's go/ I called over my shoulder curtly.
Kenzer screamed. There was a flurry of las-fire.
I wheeled back immediately. Kenzer was sprawled on the floor of the gorge, ripped apart by laser shots. He was only partially articulated, such had been the point blank ferocity of the shots. The wide puddle of blood seeping from his carcass was soaking into the soot.
There was no sign of any attacker.
'What the hell?' Barbarisater was in my hand and had been purring, but now it was dull.
Nayl dropped close to me, his matt-black hellgun sweeping the area of the corpse.
'How in the name of Terra did that happen?' he asked. 'Lief? Korl? Upside?'
I looked back. Gustine and Kraine were walking backwards slowly, scoping up at the cliff tops of the gorge.
'Nothing. No shooters above/ Gustine reported.
I slapped my palm against the cold stone face of the gorge above the marking Kenzer had found. It was unyielding.
We moved forward, following the sweep of the chasm. Kraine was covering our backs. After we'd gone about fifty metres, he suddenly cried out.
I turned in time to see him in a face-to-face gunfight with two Vessorine janissaries in full carapace-wear. Kraine staggered backwards as he was hit repeatedly in the torso, but managed to keep firing. He put a burst of rounds through the face plate of one of the Vessorines before the other one made the kill shot and dropped him into the soot.
Nayl and Medea were already firing. The remaining Vessorine swung his aim and squeezed off another salvo, winging both Eleena and Nayl.
Then he walloped over onto his back as Kara's cannon ripped him apart.
'See to them!' I ordered, pointing Medea at Nayl and Eleena. Nayl had been skinned across the left arm and Eleena had a flesh wound on her left shin. Both kept insisting they were fine. Medea opened his kitbag for field dressings.
I looked at the corpses, Kraine and the Vessorines. Gustine appeared beside me. 'Where the jesh did they come from?' he asked.
I didn't answer. I drew my runestaff over my head out of its leather boot, and gripped it tightly as I focused my force at the gorge wall. Soot and the debris of eons puffed out, and I saw another spiral mark in the wall like the one Kenzer had found.
'Charts,' I said.
'What, sir?' asked Lief.
I bent down, spitting on my fingers then rubbing my hand across the spiral marks. I tried to ignore the fact that there was a smear of blood in the spittle.