www.thevalentinechronicles.com presents:
Bad Blood
by Paul L. Mathews
In the Garden
Once, she’d been a
beautiful and healthy young woman, but now Petrid was an animated mannequin of
stained wood and bent wire. Externally, all that separated her from any other
wooden puppet was an absence of strings and one organic eye that stared out
from her carved face. Unable to blink, her eye wept constantly, tears staining
the dark material of her high collared Victorian dress.
She stood deep within
Crepitus’s flagship—the Balefire—on the threshold of the ship’s garden,
the door to which was composed of bone and exposed muscle. Like the rest of the
vessel about her, the door bled. The ship had taken an awful lot of damage
escaping that black hole, she reflected, and now the red muscle and pink flesh
that made up the walls, deck and ceiling wept blood whilst leaking tacky lymph
fluids. The arching ribs that made the walls had splintered, and the light
provided by pearlescent globes that nestled amongst
the flesh was fitful and weak. The bones beneath her feet were sticky with
blood, and the air was tainted with the smell of burnt flesh. She could feel
her father’s ship struggling for breath as the usual steady rhythm of its
heartbeat slurred and skipped.
The Valentines, she
concluded, would pay for this.
Finally, with a protracted
squelch, the door opened, and Petrid stepped into the garden beyond. It was
like stepping into another world, and she often wondered how her father managed
to install such an oasis into his ship. But then, Crepitus was capable of many
incredible things.
She now stood in a delicate
wooden arbour, the vivid green of its vines contrasting with the red of the
muscle door that flexed shut behind her. All she could see were high, solid
oaks which rose from amongst thick bushes and wild flowers. Yellows, purples,
pinks and blue stippled the vista about her, and the aroma of flora and fresh
rain wafted over her. The air was humid and damp, and condensation trickled from
the high ceiling—lost beyond the garden’s canopy of leaves—in a gentle summer
rain.
Petrid, however, hated this
place, and had done ever since she had been reborn here. The picturesque veneer
was soon dispelled if one knew where to look, subtle reminders lay hidden
amongst the greenery. Amongst the branches and plants, spiders nestled in
thick, glistening webs, their thorax’s dominated by eyes bloodshot and glaring,
and flies with eyeballs for heads swarmed about the bodies of small children
almost lost amongst the fauna. Her own eye flicked from side to side, and she
could see her father’s bodyguards stood amongst the trees, regarding her
silently. Known as the Bone Valentines, they were three skeletal
representations of the hated Ivan, Gregor and Vassilissa. Their precise nature
escaped Petrid, as did many of father’s machinations. Were they simulacrums?
The Valentines from a parallel reality? Glimpses of the future? Whatever they
were, they studied her, stock still and silent. Closest was Bone Ivan, his
skeletal hand resting on a pistol that hung by his side. That, and the symbol
of the Omega Hammers on his camouflaged parka told her this was an Ivan from an
older time, when he had been a man to fear and loathe.
Before her lay a path paved
with the skulls of kittens and puppies. Her father’s voice drifted down it
asking, “What news?” Brittle and strained, his voice scratched at the air like
wire-wool.
She moved forward as the
Bone Valentines watched her. With her feet an inch from the path she glided
into a clearing at the centre of the garden. There she found her father stood
amongst a glut of potting benches, head bent as he focused on the tiny pots of
soil and seedlings before him. He didn’t bother to look up.
She clasped her hands
together behind her back and lowered her head. “We’ve *tk* We’ve *tk* We’ve
found the Troika, father.” Her voice materialised before her wooden
face, crackling and scratched like an old gramophone.
He didn’t look up, but he
did pause. With his uniform jacket removed, his shirt sleeves were rolled up,
revealing wooden arms and hands. The rolled collar of his shirt betrayed the
point his frail head was stitched to his wooden neck. “Where?” He began to work
again, pushing a seedling into a hole with his wooden fingers before kneading
the soil to secure the fledgling plant.
“A *tk* A backwater planet
near the D’Kothren border. It doesn’t have name, just a designation: JL *tk* JL
*tk* JLY 751V. We are in position over the Troika and I have dispatched
Calci to capture *tk* capture the Valentines.”
He worked on a further pot,
dibbling a hole with his little finger. “How many units?”
“Ten skeletal.”
“Not enough. Send more.”
She hesitated. “Father…
We’ve lost a lot *tk* a lot *tk* a lot of units in both the fight with the
Jaroth Pha and the escape from the black hole. To send more *tk* more units
would leave us expose—”
“I don’t care. I won’t
allow Ivan and his pretty little nieces to escape me again. They are to be
brought before me so that I may kill them slowly. Do you understand?”
She nodded dutifully. “Yes,
father.”
They fell into silence, her
father concentrating on his plants. She waited as long as she dared. Perhaps he
would ask how she was, if she had been hurt in the battle against the Jaroth
Pha’s ship, or the escape from the Black Hole? Perhaps he would congratulate
her on finding the Troika?
But the silence remained.
Head still bowed, she stepped back. She cited the family motto, “We are the
dead,” as—with one last glance at he father—she turned and left, a tear rolling
down her wooden cheek.
Part One
Red Rain
The Hammer’s engines were
at full throttle as Tatiana tried to outrun the Tower’s explosive death,
but the tiny gunship was subsumed by the brief, infernal wave of fire that
flashed across the lagoon as the Tower erupted. As the explosion receded,
the damaged gunship continued in a spin, the rear of the craft ravaged and torn
and the engines ruined. Smoke poured from it as it ploughed on, losing
altitude, before spearing through the trees that lined the lagoon and hitting
the ground. Momentum bore it forward, gouging a trench in the ash and dead
soil, until, still sheathed in smoke, it came to a halt, the Hammer-headed nose
battered and bent, and the canopy smashed.
“Please, Boyd? Are you
there? Tatiana? Are you there? Do you copy?”
Katarina’s voice sounded
small and weak over the Hammer’s radio. Tatiana’s eyes fluttered open. Thrown
clear of the Hammer and lying in ash, she was numb, the agony of her knife
wound vanished. She couldn’t feel the bits of plexiglass she saw poking out her
body. The earth beneath her head vibrated and pulsed, rattling her teeth. She
managed to lift her head and focus on the Hammer. It was still smoking, and a
fire had broken out in the rear of the craft, the black and Halloween orange
muted by a disturbed ash hanging in the air. Of Boyd and Stanztrigger there was
no sign.
Her head fell back to the
ground, and she looked into the sky. The haze hung over the whole island,
muffling the sound of the howling wind and thunder, and of the deep throb of
colossal engines that reverberated through the island beneath. Focusing above
that pall of ash, she could see the black clouds that hid the sky parting as a
mass of stained ivory began to emerge.
Finally the clouds
dissipated, consumed by intakes, vents and docking bays that punctuated a vast
expanse of bone—the underbelly of Crepitus’s flagship—which blotted out the
sky. It was scarred and cracked, fires burning within its dreadful mass as it
rained blood upon the island. Spotlights lanced from the ship, sweeping the
island beneath, and those all too familiar troopships—built to look like sheep
skulls—began to descend from its hangars.
“Is anybody there?” Still
Katarina’s voice bleated over the Hammer’s radio. “Please. Is there anybody
there? Anybody at all?”
The answer was metronomic
and uniform. At first they were a vague outline in the curtain of ash that hung
about Tatiana, the impression of their bodies solidifying as they emerged from
the haze. Skeletal warriors moved with perfect synchronisation and purpose,
their bodies boosted by grafts of metal and cybernetic joints, their weapons
trained on Tatiana as they formed a circle about her and the Hammer.
Tatiana laughed a shallow,
sardonic laugh. It was all over. Crepitus was here.
She forced herself onto her
hands and knees, then rose unsteadily on weak legs. Her side began to pain her
as she moved, penetrating the fugue that crowded her senses. On her feet, hand
going to her wound, she drew herself up to her full height. As Crepitus’s
skeletal warriors aimed their guns at her, she appraised each in turn, turning
in a slow circle as she brought the full weight of her disdainful glare them.
Done, she stood whilst the
red rain fell upon her, coating her hair and her blue skin. There was no quip,
remonstration, or clever sound-bite as she set her jaw in defiance and awaited
the inevitable. She merely faced her death with dignity and poise.
Then the firing started.
#
Ivan and Vast forged
through the water as they bore down on the Troika’s flight-deck,
ignorant of the bulky vac-suits that would have burdened those less driven.
With the bodies of zombie Calci pricking its surface, water—thigh high and
dirty—choked the corridors. Ivan ignored them. Katarina. She was all that
mattered. He had to reach her before the Calci did.
Ivan and Vast reached the
flight-deck door, and Ivan punched at the door’s pressure-pad. The door slurred
open, and they pushed through. There stood Katarina, mesmerised as she watched
a tide of Calci advance across the beach. Through the rain they marched,
rhythmic and inexorable, illuminated by spotlights from Crepitus’s flagship.
“Katarina! Get down!” Ivan
seized her shoulders and pulled her backward, forcing her into a crouch with
her back against the flight-deck’s security console.
Ivan heard a metallic sha-chik
beside him and crouched, interposing himself between Vast and Katarina as he
grasped the leading edge of the console to smother her shaking body. With a
heavy machine gun braced against her expansive shoulder as its bullet belt
trailed after her, the tattooed Vermiddion scowled and bared her teeth at the
Calci, glaring through narrow eyes. With a mighty boom boom boom, she
began to fire, the report of her gun magnified by the confines of the flight
deck.
Katarina cried out, hands
going over her ears as she fell forward in to Ivan
#
Tatiana dove to the ground
as soon as the fighting started. Falling heavily, she ignored the pain and
looking up. From behind the ring of Calci, from amongst the dead trees and the
smoke from the crashed Hammer, Moreaus emerged, guns blazing. Ramshackle they
may have been, but they’d come to fight, fangs bared and snarling as they
settled into two rows, one knelt and one standing. The muzzle-flash from their
guns daubed the night orange and red, and the lattice work of bullets threaded
the clearing.
The Calci fought back,
turning to face their new assailants and firing, their masers spitting
invisible death at the marauding Moreaus—but the Calci were outnumbered two to
one. Taking out only a fraction of the Moreaus, the Calci fell, their bones
shattering and their cybernetics failing as they hit the ground. One staggered
by Tatiana, collapsing to the ground beside her as its skull vanished in a
corona of bone. Its maser-rifle—hot and steaming in the drizzle—fell by her
hand.
The heat pricked her skin,
and instinct told her to take it, to use it. Her little finger twitched, moving
to touch the gun, but the thought of Ivan and his disapproval flashed though
her mind. She moved her hand away.
She looked up again. With a
howl, three Scythes—thin and dirty gunships with an array of weapons packed
into their noses—settled above the clearing, running lights blinking in
syncopation with the resonance of their
Behind her a camouflaged
armoured troop carrier smashed through the trees, headlights blazing as it
stopped beside the downed Hammer. More Moreaus spilt from a door in its side,
and a dog-headed gunner trained its turret-mounted machine gun upon Tatiana. As
the Moreaus left the APC they brought up SMGs and side-arms, aiming them at
Tatiana as they shouted, their voices lost under the uneven rumbling of the
vehicle’s engine.
Wide-eyed, she watched them
move toward her, trying to gage their intentions. What were they going to do?
Would they kill her? Eat her? Her hand moved back to the fallen maser-rifle.
#
Still shielding Katarina,
Ivan looked over his shoulder and out of the flight-deck’s smashed canopy.
Vast’s bullets spewed forth, sweeping across the beach and the Calci. Through
the rain and ash he saw the forward most Calci convulse as their bodies
splintered and snapped under the withering fire, falling to the floor in shrouds
of fragmented bone and sparks. The rows behind returned fire, the pitter patter
of their maser rifles almost childish and petulant compared with Vast’s
monstrous gun.
Their invisible maser beams
splashed across the hull of the flight-deck, jabbing ineffectually at its
armoured hide. Little blossoms of sparks flowered around the canopy, and about
Ivan panels and consoles buckled and melted as beams of invisible energy tore
into the flight-deck’s interior.
He turned back to Katarina,
and kissed her hair, shouting over the sound of Vast’s gun. “It is okay,
Katarina. I am here, yes? I will protect you.”
And that, he reflected,
means finishing off Crepitus. Once and for all.
#
The Moreaus closed in on
Tatiana, forming a circle about her and the Hammer. Her hand closed about the
maser-rifle. Gripping it, she took a deep breath, trying to find her calm
place. Calci were one thing, but these flea-ridden scum-bags? If they wanted
her, then they’d have to fight for her.
She hesitated. What would
Ivan think? What he say if he knew she’d resorted to using a gu—
A boot came down on her
hand, trapping it against the rifle. She yelped in pain, looking up. A mangy
lion-headed Moreau—young and malnourished—glared down at her, teeth bare. She
had the briefest moment to realise she’d seen this one before—back on the Tower
as he’d been dragged her off the Dogfish—before he crouched, shifting his
weight onto her hand as he forced the barrel of his pistol against her neck.
“You!” he said. “You
brought the Calci here. Why?” She couldn’t answer, agonised as her hand was
slowly crushed beneath his boot. “Answer me!”
Pawing ineffectually at his
ankle, kicking feebly, she looked onto his glaring face. “Get…” She winced. Her
voice was stretched and hoarse, her throat scarred by her screaming in the
Cook’s galley. “Get your damned foot off my hand, you animal,” she said through
clenched teeth.
“Do as she says.”
Tatiana froze. Boyd! She
shifted again, looking over her shoulder toward the smashed Hammer. Sure
enough, he stood by its nose, leaning heavily against its blackened hull. With
one hand he clutched his shoulder, blood seeping from between his fingers, with
the other he aimed a SMG at the lion.
“Do as she says, or I blow
your bloody head off!
With a uniformity of
movement worthy of the Calci, the Moreaus raised their weapons and trained them
on the Scot. Above them, the Scythes shifted, weapons and spotlights zeroing on
him. Unfazed, his aim didn’t waver. “I’m not in the mood, boy. Let the girl go,
and no-one dies.”
“That’s enough.” Emerging
from the smoke as the rear of the crashed Hammer, Stanztrigger moved toward
them, his goat-legs unsteady and wavering. He too nursed a wound on his arm,
and his long nose, torn ears and horns were lost beneath a choking of blood.
“Leave the girl be.” Head lowered, jaw clenched, his stare and the baring of
his bloody teeth told everybody he wouldn’t ask again.
“Stanztrigger? You’re
alive?” The lion’s voice rose an octave.
Tatiana looked back to the
lion, who, in turn, looked at Stanztrigger, forehead creasing as his eyes
narrowed. Then his ears twitched as he looked at Boyd and Tatiana in turn. He
shifted his head to one side to spit, then stood, lifting his foot from
Tatiana’s hand as he lowered his pistol.
Stanztrigger limped forward.
As Tatiana curled up and hugged her hand, she watched the goat-headed Moreau.
His movements were pained and slow, and he winced with every step as he said,
“How many?”
“Twenty five of us, with
three Scythes and the APC.”
Tatiana almost didn’t hear
the answer. Boyd had reached her now, and he knelt to take her up in his strong
arms. She melted into him, and a painful pressure gripped her chest and throat
as she began to sob, bravado stripped away as she was momentarily overtaken by
her fear and relief. “It’s okay, Princess,” he whispered, kissing her hair as
he stroked it. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
“You’re bleeding!” Her
damaged voice rose in pitch, and she made a futile attempt to grip the rent
flesh on his shoulder together. Her fingers merely slithered amongst the blood.
“I’m… Stop it.” He took
hold of her wrists, pulling her hands away as he looked at her. “Never mind me.
Look at you. You’ve half the Hammer’s bloody windshield sticking in you!”
Walking past the lion,
Stanztrigger knelt beside Tatiana and Boyd, arms resting in his thighs. “You
are both okay?”
“We’ll live, but the
Princess needs help—”
“I’m fine—”
“My arse!” He turned toward
the Moreaus, calling out, “Medic? Medic!”
Tatiana watched his mouth
as he talked. Oh, to taste those lips again. She gathered herself, forcing
herself to concentrate. Reaching into his flak-vest to produce his pince-nez,
Stanztrigger tried to fix their tiny golden frames across the bridge of his
nose, only to discover they were bent, the lenses shattered. With a baleful
look, he put them away, squinting hard to see Boyd. They looked into each
other’s faces, and a silent communication seemed to pass between them. The
Moreau’s eyes flicked to Boyd’s wounded shoulder, and the Scot gave a weak
smile and a subtle nod. Meanwhile a scrawny looking Moreau with an otter’s head
and a first-aid kit crouched beside Tatiana and began to examine her wounds.
Standing with a grunt of
pain, Stanztrigger patted Boyd on the other shoulder as he turned to converse
with the lion.
“How are you, young lady?”
The otter was unpacking dressings from his kit.
“She’ll be okay,” Boyd
said, “but she needs these shards removing. The wounds will need to be
sterilised and dressed.”
Their voices faded into the
background as Tatiana turned to Boyd and just stared at him, almost unaware of
the otter beginning to gently extract the plexiglass from her numb body. His
breathing was strained and raspy, his arms were shaking, and he smelt
of…cologne?
She stiffened, eyes
narrowing. Why would he smell of cologne?
#
Vast ceased firing, smoke
coiling from the red-hot barrel of her machine gun. Satisfied the Calci must be
destroyed, Ivan stood, muscles shifting like an antiquated steam train. He
squinted through the smoke, surveying the beach. It was a scrapheap of
decimated Calci. Their ruined cybernetics spat sparks into the night, and the
blood from Crepitus’s ship ran down the bone and metal like rain on a
windshield. The smell of burnt copper and gunpowder overpowered the night air.
Even Ivan, with his history
of violence and martial experience, felt his stomach lurch at the sight of this
crimson downpour. He squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath to calm
himself. “Good work, Vast. Now get to hangar, yes?”
Vast nodded, and left the
flight-deck, the dirty water that rose to her thighs doing little to arrest her
swift, powerful strides. As the Vermiddion left, Ivan turned back to Katarina,
reaching down to take her under the arms and help her stand.
“You’re alive! Thank God!”
Katarina said, voice choked. She threw her arms about him. “I thought you’d
been killed!”
“I am fine.” He pushed her
away, looking at her. She was sodden and shivering, wet hair plastered to her
face. Her thin stripy jumper clung to her body, and her make-up had run,
leaving black trails of mascara down her face. She needed to get into some dry
clothes—but not yet. There was still much to do.
He smiled at her and gave
her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. With his other hand he tapped at the comm
set in his hear. “Dolly? Do you copy? Are you there, Dolly, yes?”
A brief burst of static in
his earpiece heralded the serf’s response. “I am here, Master Ivan.”
“Where is ‘here’?”
“Engineering. I’m currently
jacked into the Troika’s systems.”
“Can you get her airborne?”
“Affirmative. The
“Do it, yes?”
“Very good, Master Ivan.
Doll Two out.”
#
Stanztrigger knelt beside
Tatiana and Boyd once more. “Princess Tatiana, your vessel, the Troika,
will it still fly?”
“Um .…”
“It was buggered when I
left,” Boyd said. Tatiana still stared at him. He was almost ashen, and she
could have sworn he’d lost some of the weight about his face. And what was that
strange sheen on his skin? Sweat? “But it may still be able to go sub-orbital.
Why?”
Stanztrigger turned to look
at the Scot. “Because we need to get up there.” He jerked his thumb toward
Crepitus’s ship as it brooded over them. “The island’s crawling with Calci. To
have any chance of killing Crepitus, we need to get off the ground and take the
fight to him.”
“Agreed,” Boyd said,
nodding. “I’ll need to contact the Troika.”
“Comm set,” Stanztrigger
said, turning and snapping his long fingers at a further Moreau. “Now.” The
Moreau—a feline female—moved quickly to stand beside him. Tatiana fancied her
gaze lingered on the lion, a shy smile touching her lips. She removed a comm
set nestling in her ear, and began handing it to Boyd.
The cat paused. “You?” the
Moreau said to Boyd. “You’re the one who killed Stat.”
“Not now, Lorelei,”
Stanztrigger said. “Just give him the set.”
#
“Ivan? D’ya read me? Are
you there, over?”
“We’re here, Boyd.” Sitting
at the Troika’s engineering station, up to his chest in dirty water,
Ivan stabbed at the consoles intransigent instruments. They were loathe to
surrender anything more than garbled fragments of diagnostic reports. “Where
are you?”
“I’m not sure. Somewhere on
the island.”
“Is Tatiana with you?”
Afraid of the answer, the question almost caught in his throat. Out of the
corner of his eye he saw Katarina—sitting at the Troika’s flight
controls and strapping herself in—pause, her hand going to her comm set as she
too awaited the answer.
“Yes, and she’s alive.”
Tatiana was alive! Thank
God! Ivan weakened slightly, and he squeezed his eyes shut. He took a deep
breath and exhaled through purse lips. Tears welled in his eyes. “Is she okay?
Is she hurt?”
“Not now, Ivan. We need the
Troika. Can it fly?”
“We’re working on it now,
yes?” Even as he spoke, the water about him shivered, and he could feel the
throb of the
“Get the Troika
airborne, and home in on this signal. Boyd out. ”
#
“Calci!” Tatiana shouted as
one of the Scythes hovering over the clearing shuddered and yawed whilst
festooned in small wreaths of flame.
In typically uniform lines
they emerged firing from the trees. Surprised, a handful of Moreaus fell
instantly, eviscerated by the molecular agitation of the Calci’s masers.
“Return fire!” Stanztriger
shouted. Knelt on the ground, a fresh tourniquet about his bicep, he sprang to
his feet, shrugging the startled medic aside. “Single rounds! Selective fire!”
An explosion rocked the
ground as the damaged Scythe—spinning out of control—thundered into the midst
of the Calci and vanished in a ball of flame. Bits of Calci and hot metal
whistled through clearing, bouncing off the hull of the downed Hammer and
tearing holes in a handful of Moreaus, the APC, and the dog handling its heavy
machine gun.
“Stanztrigger! Here!”
Tatiana rolled away from the medic attending her wounds and snatched up the
fallen maser rifle. As the Moreau turned to her, she tossed him the weapon.
With a fluid motion he caught it and turned back, opening fire.
“Perimeter down!” the lion shouted.
“Grenades and support fire!”
On cue, the outer Moreaus
dove to the ground, firing. Those at the centre of the formation let loose with
grenade launchers and SMGs, as a fresh Moreau manned the APC’s heavy
machine-gun. Above them the two undamaged Scythes spat streams of bullets at
the besieging Calci.
A Moreau fell beside
Tatiana, and its blood splashed her. She couldn’t contain a startled shriek,
and she kicked against the ground in an attempt to crawl away from its rent
body. Boyd stopped her, however, wrapping a thick arm about her.
“Tatiana! Take this!” Boyd
shouted over the furore, thrusting a pistol in her hand. “No arguments!”
“N…” She faltered, Suddenly
the smell of cologne was so much stronger. She felt a little light-headed. She
looked at the pistol in her hand with a dim mixture of curiosity and revulsion.
“Take it!” He paused as he
began to fire again. Three rapid shots decimated three Calci skulls.
“No, Boyd,” she said.
Shoving the pistol into his belt she gritting her teeth and—by instinct
alone—put her wrist under her nose to block the smell of after-shave. “But I
will take this.”
She snatched the comm set
from his ear and put it on. Ignoring Boyd’s exasperated look, she crouched low
as bullets, shrapnel and maser beams stabbed by her. “Kat? Can you hear me? Is
the Troika ready?”
If there was a response, she
didn’t hear it. One of the Scythes was torn in half by a fierce flurry of
explosions, the flaming wreckage spiralling through the raining blood to fall
on the battle beneath.
A pair of Calci gunships
burst out of the curtain of rain and hanging ash. Skull shaped and with an
exhaustive array of weapons, one circled the remaining Scythe, the other
settled over the Moreaus. Bullets pinged off its hide as it lowered its nose,
training its weapons on Tatiana and Boyd. Frozen in place, Tatiana stared at
the vehicle—at its blank, soulless eyes—and waited to die.
Wooden Heart
With a roar of displaced
air the Troika lunged out of the night. Throttle opened up full,
Throttling back, turgid
seawater pissing from the holes in its hull, the Troika overshot the
clearing, exposing its aft to the remaining Calci gunship—its aft, and its
hangar. Vast—knelt on the brink of the hangar’s open doors—fired a compact
anti-aircraft rocket she held to her shoulder. The fiery wake of the rocket
tore toward the gunship, thundering into its skeletal face just as it managed
to bring its weapons to bear. The resulting explosion ripped the front from the
ship, the broken skeletal crew spat into the air, and the remaining Scythe
finished the job with a barrage from its chain-guns. This last Calci gunship
slurred out of the sky and exploded somewhere beyond the trees. Moments later
the last of the Calci infantry fell to the Moreaus.
Crouching amongst the
debris and smoke on the ground, Tatiana grinned. “Nice work, Kat! Now, get down
here—we’ve got work to do.”
#
Ash, bone, and dead bark
swirled about the Troika as it landed, hangar doors still open. Vast,
Stalin, and Ivan stood in the hangar, waiting for Tatiana and the others. Ivan
flexed his arms nervously. Would Tatiana be in one piece? She may still be
alive, but what if she were hurt? Ivan doubted he could control his anger if
Boyd had allowed her to be hurt.
With a whir of weary hydraulics,
the cutter’s ramp came down, and Tatiana and Boyd boarded. Ignoring the fifteen
or so bedraggled Moreaus that accompanied them, Ivan lurched forward as soon as
he saw his niece being helped aboard by Boyd.
“Oh, Ivan! Thank God!”
Tatiana pushed away from Boyd, and almost collapsed into her Uncle’s embrace.
Tears rolled down the pale blue of her cheeks, clearing a channel in the blood
and dirt. “I thought we were all going to die!”
Ivan didn’t answer. He just
squeezed Tatiana tight, and closed his eyes even tighter. He didn’t know who
these animal headed creatures were, but he’d be damned if he was going to cry
in front of them.
After a moment, he held
Tatiana at arm’s length. “You look awful, yes?”
“You should see the other
guy.”
They laughed, and Ivan grinned,
looking at her. She was becoming more like her father everyday.
“C’mon, Princess,” Boyd
said as—avoiding eye-contact with Ivan—he stepped up to Tatiana, wrapping an
arm about her shoulders, “you need sickbay.”
“Just a minute, Boyd.” Ivan
hadn’t seen any Moreaus in action for years. He wanted to ask who these were,
but he stopped, distracted. Something had changed in Tatiana. There was a
subtle tension when Boyd touched her. A delicate yearning? And why did she look
that way at the Scot? What had passed between them? Had Boyd ignored Ivan’s
dire warning about touching his niece?
Derailing Ivan’s train of
thought, a Moreau with a goat’s head came to stand with them, saying, “This is
Ivan, your leader?”
“Leader?” Ivan looked at
the Moreau. He was covered in blood and smelt like wet dogs. He stood tall and
straight, but the trembling in his limbs and the agony in his eyes told Ivan
this creature was in a lot of pain. “No, I am not their ‘leader’. I am their
Uncle, yes?” He turned to Tatiana and Boyd, gesturing at Stanztrigger. “Who is
this?
“Ivan,” Boyd said, “this is
the leader of the Eaters, Stanztrigger.”
Ivan’s mouth fell open.
“Stanztrigger? The Eaters? As in, the Eaters?”
“The same.” The pain in his
eyes momentarily displaced with pride, he seemed to gain an inch in height, his
chest swelling.
“He and his company,” Boyd
said, “they saved mine and Tatiana’s lives. Stanztrigger, this is Ivan
Valentine, ex of the Omega Hammers.”
“My God. It is a pleasure…
an honour to meet you, yes?” Ivan extended his hand. “You’re a legend in
the Pagentorns.”
Stanztrigger gripped Ivan’s
hand and, after a swift shake, lifted it to his nose. He sniffed at the wrist
delicately. The flaring of the nostrils, and the gentle inhalation of scent and
air made Ivan squirm, and he looked at his niece.
Tatiana merely smiled a wan
smile, saying, “He does that.”
“You are a man of
principle, courage, and determination.” Stanztrigger lowered Ivan’s hand and
slapped him on the shoulder. “It will be my pleasure to finally kill Crepitus with
you beside me.”
“Kill Crepitus…? Of course!
The Beggar Barons paid you to kill him. You engaged him at Danica’s Tears.”
“And lost. Badly. My wife
and son were killed along with two thirds of my men. Now I shall have my
revenge.”
“About that,” Tatiana said.
“Shouldn’t we be going?”
“Indeed. Tatiana, you will
go to sickbay, and Katarina will fly Troika, yes?”
“No.”
Ivan blinked, looking at
Tatiana with surprise. “What?”
“No, Uncle.” She looked
back at him, jaw set and her chin protruding. “I’m not going to sickbay until
we’re all safe. I won’t sit this one out. Besides,” she sniffed, lifting her
head to look down her nose, “Kat can’t fly the ship as well as me.”
“Princess, you’re hurt—”
“I said ‘No’, Boyd—”
“Tatiana—Tzarina—Boyd
is right—”
“No! And that’s final!” She
stamped her foot. “Now, get me to the flight-deck so we can get this over
with.”
A brief pause, and Ivan
nodded. “Very well.” He looked at Tatiana, at the surrender in her body as Boyd
propped her up, and he balked. He didn’t want to leave her with the Scot. Not
until he found out what was going on. If that man had touched her, if he’d
forced himself upon her… “Vast, you will take Tatiana to the flight-deck and
stay with her whilst we find Crepitus, yes?”
“What? Wait a minute—”
Ivan held up his hand. “No,
Boyd. You will be coming with me, and Vast will stay aboard Troika.”
“But Vast’s worth ten of
me! You’ll stand a lot better chance against the Calci if she’s with you.”
“Vast is worth ten of you,
correct…” His voice trailed off briefly, nostrils flaring. What could he smell?
That indefinable—yet unmistakably—scent that was uniquely Thom’s. He felt a
little light-headed. Why could he smell Thom? Marshalling his senses, he
focused on Boyd. “And that is why she stays with the girls, yes?”
“But, Uncle—”
“No, Tatiana. I have made
up my mind. Boyd comes with me.”
Boyd and Ivan glared at one
another, and—out of the corner of his eyes—Ivan could see Tatiana looking at
them in turn, like a spectator at a tennis match. Ivan’s lip curled and he
inhaled deeply, his chest expanding as he drew himself to his full height,
looming over Boyd.
“Okay, you’re the boss.”
That trace of Thom, that delicate taste in the air, vanished, but Boyd’s glare
did not. As Vast took Tatiana by the arm and led her away, the Scot stepped
forward, shoulder blocking Ivan. “You’d better be right about this, Ivan,” he
murmured as he pushed past.
Ivan stared after him, and
saw Stanztrigger as he also watched the Scot walk away. A dark look fell upon
the Moreau’s face. Dark, and a little sorrowful.
#
The Balefire’s
darkened bridge smelt of rotting meat, and its walls of bone and muscle
glistened with blood. Skeletal Calci stood rigid around the periphery,
hard-wired into the ship by umbilical cords that pierced the back of their
skulls. A massive, blood-shot eye sat in the ceiling, blinking occasionally as
it looked down on Petrid.
Stood at the centre of the
bridge, she regarded a bank of monitors burnt into the bridge’s main walls,
their frames smudged and lost beneath scar tissue and pearly buttons that
peeped from clitoral hoods. The monitors betrayed the Troika lifting off
from the planet and heading for the Balefire.
Behind her, the vulva that
marked the bridge’s main door parted, and Crepitus entered, flanked by the Bone
Valentines. Hands concealed in leather gloves, Crepitus buttoned up his uniform
jacket. Soon the jackets high collar covered the wood of his neck, and he at
least resembled the man he used to be. “What news, daughter?” The words
slithered from his lips, rearing and spitting at her like a serpent.
“The Valentine have evaded
*tk* evaded *tk* evaded our ground forces. As we speak they are approaching the
Balefire *tk* the Balefire *tk* the Balefire aboard the Troika.”
“They’re approaching us?”
Something approaching a laugh convulsed on his lips. “How typically stupid.”
“I have fighters *tk*
fighters at the ready, and batteries *tk* batteries three through twelve have
the Troika in their sights.”
“No. The Troika will
be allowed to dock. Then you will intercept its crew and kill them—”
“But, father, our *tk* our
*tk* our forces. We haven’t many resources to call o—”
“Recall the ground forces
if you have to. I don’t care. Just make sure the Troika’s crew are
killed, and the Valentines are brought to me. You will oversee the operation
personally.” Stepping up to her, he gripped her slender wooden shoulders. “And
Petrid? Should they beg? Should you falter? The Valentines took Scullion from
us. Never forget that.” He stepped aside and gestured toward the door. “Now
go.”
She lowered her head
dutifully, a tear rolling down her painted cheek. “Yes, father.”
#
The hangar door remained
open as the cutter forged its way toward Crepitus’s ship. Ivan—with Boyd and
Stalin beside him—stood on the verge of the door whilst holding a safety cordon.
The wind whipped his white hair about his brow, and he had to squint against
the dust and ash that assailed him. He watched the island recede. It looked
small and diseased. Lonely. He glanced over his shoulder at the Moreaus, and
wondered how they’d survived in such a desolate place.
They were now in two rows,
knelt with heads down as Stanztrigger, eyes closed, stood before them, reciting
the Lord’s Prayer. One of the Moreaus, who wasn’t listening, noticed Ivan. The
one with the lion’s head. Although knelt, he was looking about the hangar and
tilting his head to one side as though listening to the whine of the
“They’re going to do it!
They are! They’re going to shoot us down!”
Ivan looked at Stalin as
the cyborg dog paced back and forth by his feet, magnetic paws securing him to
the deck as his ceramic claws tapped against the metal. Tongue out, panting,
skinthetic eyebrows raised, his tail was between his legs and he looked like he
was about to die of fright.
“I doubt it, Stalin. I know
this man, yes? He wants me and the girls in one piece to torture us.” He
allowed himself a small, dark smile before teasing, “He’ll probably just shoot
you on sight, however.”
The cutter reached
Crepitus’s ship, and Ivan watched as the wounded underbelly of the Balefire
swallowed the sky above. Cracked, blood leaking from the fissures, the bone
hull was burnt and tortured. Clearly the Troika wasn’t the only damaged
ship.
The cutter slowed before
climbing up and into one of the Balefire’s open hangars. Only the Troika’s
running lights assuaged the darkness therein. As its
“We’re here.” Tatiana’s
voice sounded tired over the comm, and Ivan was sure the bad landing was a
reflection on her condition.
The Moreaus sprang to their
feet, moving toward the hangar door. Simultaneously the Troika’s
spotlights burst into life, illuminating the darkness beyond. Ivan allowed
himself a small, sardonic smile. It was just as he remembered. Like a scene
from the Inferno. Red, dripping shreds of lacerated muscle hung from the ribs
that formed the arched ceiling, and sheered bone speared into the open air. The
smell of rotten meat choked the atmosphere. The broken bodies of skeletal Calci
were cast about the bony deck, their remains almost lost amongst the smashed wreckage
of fighters. Once these dog-skull vessels would have hung from the rib-cage
ceiling, but now they were smashed and strewn about the hangar. Flies with
staring and bloodshot eyes for heads flew to and fro, the insidious buzz of
their wings multi-layered and constant.
“Secure the area,”
Stanztrigger said to his Moreaus, and Ivan turned with some interest to observe
this creature in action.
The Moreaus’ response was
immediate. Jumping from the Troika, they spread through the Balefire’s
hangar with their SMGs raised before kneeling in a circle around the cutter.
Only the lion remained with
Stanztrigger, listening intently to his comm set. “Perimeter secure, sir,” he
said as he turned to his commander.
“Excellent,” Stanztrigger
said. “Now we move out.” He turned to Ivan. “I trust you are coming with us?”
“Of course. Me and the dog,
yes?”
“What? No way!”
“Yes, Stalin. Now shut up.”
“Very well.” Stanztrigger
turned to his lion lieutenant, placing a hand on his shoulder and squeezing it.
“Joseph, you stay here with Lorelei and the others. Protect this ship—and the
Princesses—at all costs. We will need them if we are to escape. Do you
understand?”
Joseph nodded, the matted
hair in his lions mane quivering. He cast a furtive glance at Ivan before
answering, “Yes, sir.”
“And, Joseph, I know you
must be hungry, but on no account must you—or any of your team—eat any
part of the Calci bodies left on the Troika.
Do you understand?”
Joseph nodded once more.
“Yes, sir.”
“Right,” Boyd said, raising
his Calci maser to his shoulder. “Let’s go.”
“No.” Stanztrigger raised
his hands, halting them. “Not yet.”
Ivan raised an eyebrow.
“Not yet?”
“As much as I respect your
principles and your moral fibre, Ivan Valentine, I will not let my Moreaus die
as they fight beside an unarmed man. I must insist you carry a weapon.”
The Moreau’s gaze locked
onto Ivan’s, who smiled before saying, “As you like.” Crossing over to the
bulkhead beside the hangar door, he wrenched a fire-axe from an open tool
locker, and brandished it with both hands. “Now we go, yes?”
#
Petrid stood in the fleshy
elevator, en route to the Troika. Unable to close her eye, she
bowed her head and covered her face with her wooden hands. She imagined, just
for moment, that she was a brave fairytale warrior-woman making her way through
the wicked wizard’s castle as she sought to slay the evil witches. Like Joan of
Arc, or Maria Morevna, or Nordwina the Eiffellender, her armour glistened, her
crown glittered, and her sword gleamed. Then, when she had slain the witches,
her winged horse would carry her home to her Princess, and their castle in the
sky.
Lost to the fantasy, she
didn’t feel her tears slip between her wooden fingers, running down her hand
and soaking the cuff of her mouldy old dress.
#
The unit of ten Moreaus—with
Ivan, Stanztrigger, and Boyd taking point—advanced across the hangar, their
boots struggling for grip on the bloody bones. As they approached one of the
hangar doors, it slopped open with a wet squelch. Immediately skeletal Calci
poured forth, firing as they came.
To either side of Ivan two
Moreaus went down, their chests vanishing as they were converted into photons
by the Calci’s masers. As Boyd and Stanztrigger’s masers flashed, the bestial
company returned fire, their SMGs loud and bright in the gloom and oppressive
silence. The first wave of Calci fell, but the ranks behind pressed on,
striding over their dead comrades and closing the gap to the invaders.
Then—with blades springing from cybernetic sheaths above their wrists—they
engaged the Moreaus hand-to-hand.
One lunged for Ivan, who
heaved with his axe, splitting the skull in half and destroying the cybernetic
brain within. As the Calci collapsed, Ivan stepped over the body, gritting his
teeth in pain and determination. Beside him Boyd continued to fire, cutting the
Calci down before they could reach him, and Stanztrigger used his rifle as a
club, crushing skulls and breaking bones with a savage passion. Of Stalin there
was no sign. With a further swing of his axe, Ivan beheaded another Calci.
Then the battle was over,
ending as quickly as it had begun. The Calci were beaten down and smashed to
pieces. Their limbs twitched and sparked as small spirals of smoke writhed
about them. A cheer went up from the Moreaus.
“No time to celebrate,
Stanztrigger,” Ivan said. The strength of Crepitus’s forces had always been
sheer weight of numbers. Small units like this would be easy to overcome, but
they couldn’t afford to let the Calci regroup. “We must move on.”
The Moreau nodded.
“Agreed.” He turned to his unit, gesturing toward the open door. “Forward. I
will take point.”
As the unit moved passed
him, Ivan paused to look over his shoulder. The Troika sat in the
half-light, and—even from there—he could see Tatiana and Katarina through the
cutter’s smashed canopy. They waved to him. As he waved back, he tapped at his
comm set, saying, “Tatiana. Katarina. Be careful. Crepitus will send more Calci
here. Maybe even his daughter.” He stopped, looking toward the small knot of
Moreaus they’d left to guard the ship, focusing on the lion Joseph. Aware they
were on an open channel, he switched to the Oridian equivalent of Latin,
saying, “Lola hule llionen. Stealu by ellastat ledom trafe Joseph. I-jainkir
nodt lohoush ellehan,”
There was a small pause
before Tatiana said, “I-jainkir aadosjalkis, Uncle.”
“Aaja hule,” said
Katarina.
“Ivan Valentine. We must
go. Now!”
Ivan turned to see
Stanztrigger and his unit waiting at the door. “I’m coming.” Ivan said, limping
toward them.
As he approached,
Stanztrigger went through the door, Boyd and the Moreaus piling in after him.
Tagging onto the end of the line, Ivan reached the door and looked back for the
last time. His gaze fell upon Joseph; the lion's green eyes shone with
reflected half-light as he watched them leave.
Joe the Lion
Stalin tapped into
communications between Crepitus and his forces. The speaker on his back
crackled and buzzed as he relayed the information to Ivan. “Skeletal units
Alpha Eight through Twelve docking at hangar thirteen,” a flat and metronomic
voice said, doubtless one of Crepitus’s skeletal commanders. “Units Delta
Seven, Hydra Nine, and Epsilon Six now alighting at hangars one, three, and
five. Unit Theta Five now approaching hangar nineteen. Security details Ceti
One through Six now moving into position.”
Ivan’s head sank, a wave of
fatigue pricking him even through the adrenalin. “That’s enough, Stalin.”
The cyborg dog cut the
signal and the speaker fell silent. A hush fell over the unit. Ivan looked up,
appraising them. They’d left the Balefire’s main corridors after a
further clash with a unit of Calci skeletons and moved into a series of low,
narrow arterial conduits that criss-crossed the ship. Crouched down or resting
in their haunches, the group looked tired and bedraggled.
At point Stanztrigger
fitted a new cell to his maser rifle with shaking hands covered in clotting
blood. His soldiers—thin and dirty—trembled with a combination of fear and
fatigue. They stared about them, eyes wide and fitful, as they slipped fresh
clips into their SMGs. Dogs, wolves, a bull and a cat, they panted, slavered
and mewed.
Behind Ivan, Boyd leant
against the conduit wall, ignoring the mucus that coated it. Eyes closed and
lips moving gently as he whispered to himself, the Scot’s skin gleamed, coated
in a thick sweat. Ivan’s gaze lingered on him. It had never occurred to Ivan
before, but there something about Boyd seemed gently reminiscent of Scullion.
Something about his mouth. About his lips.
Thom Scullion. Ivan turned
away, the image of his beloved Thom—bound and battered deep in the Balefire’s
brig all those years ago—stung him like an acid kiss. There was no time for
this. They had to get moving. The longer they lingered, the better Crepitus’s
chance of revenge.
“Stalin, heel.” With the
wide eyed and leaden-tailed dog at his side, Ivan moved along the conduit,
squeezing past the Moreaus to reach Boyd. The Scot nodded wearily at Ivan’s
approach.
“We need to move. Now.”
Ivan squatted down beside Boyd. “There may already be more Calci on ship than
we can handle.” He turned to his dog. “Stalin? What is quickest route to
Crepitus?”
“If we move along this
conduit,” Stalin said, a tiny green hologram of the Balefire’s
schematics springing out of a projector in his left eye, “we can cut across to
the spine and move directly to the bridge.”
“Then we move out, yes?”
“Ivan, wait a minute.” Boyd
pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes.
He then leant toward Ivan,
breathing in his ear. The feel of his hot and urgent breath, his subtle
scent—so similar to the smell of Scullion’s leathers—threatened to derail
Ivan’s concentration until he marshalled himself.
Boyd continued. “These
Moreaus? They’re just kids. They may have spent all their lives fighting for
survival on a barren planet, but they’ve no combat experience. They’ve never
faced anything like the Calci. I’m surprised they’ve even got this far.”
“He’s right, Ivan,” Stalin
said. “The Moreaus we left to protect the Troika? They looked petrified
when we left. I should know.”
“And they haven’t even
faced the Dopple-Calci yet.” There was a shiver in Boyd’s voice. “Facing the
undead is bad enough, but when it’s like looking in a mirror? How d’ya think
they’ll cope? How long ‘til they lose their bottle and run?”
#
The door parted with a wet
and sloppy noise, revealing the semi-darkness of the hangar. Stood on the
threshold, Petrid peered through the door. She could see the Troika, its
hull choked with the Balefire’s drying blood, thick and crusty. The
cutter looked old and tired, with damaged panels hanging from its frame.
Ruptured conduits and wiring spilt from holes in the hull like exposed
intestine, and the fitful arrhythmia of its landing lights suggested the
unsteady beat of a dying heart.
A small group of Moreaus—no
more then half a dozen of the flea-ridden creatures—formed some sort of
perimeter around the vessel. Not that it mattered, she reflected as she
gathered herself for what had to come. Her father’s words pricked at her sense
of duty: “The Valentines took Scullion from us. Never forget that.”
She raised her head to
glare across the hangar, and her voice scratched the silence. “Yes, father.”
A haze of smoke—coloured
rust red by the flashing of damaged consoles and monitors—hung thick in the Troika’s
flight-deck, courted by the taste of burning. This haze was stirred by the air
that breezed through the flight-deck’s Troika’s smashed canopy, and the
smell of rotten flesh from the hangar outside fought with the aroma of burnt
out wiring. The incessant beep beep beep of failing computer systems
chattered in the stillness.
Vast stood guard at the
door, the red bulk of her Vermiddion body filling the aperture, whilst Tatiana
and Katarina studied the flight-deck instrumentation. The twins’ reunion had
been tearful, but the gravity of their situation had meant it was also brief.
Katarina stood at the cutter’s engineering console, hunching over the displays
as she ran diagnostics and re-routed power supplies, whilst Tatiana sat at the
security station.
“Stealu by ellastat
ledom trafe Joseph.” Ivan had said over the comm before he’d left. “I don’t
trust Joseph.” Tatiana played with her hair as she studied the security
displays. As soon as Ivan and the others had gone, she’d erred on the side of
caution and deployed the Stasi. Even now the tiny airborne surveillance
drones hovered about the Troika, cloaked in the darkness by their
onboard camograph systems.
Tatiana leant forward,
fingers moving across blinking buttons as she switched the main monitor to a
particular Stasi. Zooming in with the drone’s lens, the screen filled
with an image of Joseph and his companion—the cat Moreau Lorelei—standing guard
under the nose of the Troika. The equipment tinted them a putrid green
as it compensated for the low light, giving them a sickly, almost Calci-esque
appearance. Tatiana turned up the volume on the machine’s mic, and the speaker
buzzed as it betrayed the Moreaus.
“… should get out of here
as soon as we can,” Lorelei said, glancing over her shoulder. She fidgeted with
her gun whilst, her eyes wide as she looked back and forth fitfully. “If
Stanztrigger wants to fight this ‘Crepitus’,” she said, racing through the
words with a nervous, fearful energy, “let him, but we’ve no quarrel with him.
And that Boyd? He killed Stat. And Lev! He’s even wearing his kit! Have you seen
Stanztrigger, anyway? He’s hurt bad, dead on his feet.”
The lion put a finger to
her lips, silencing her. “Lorelei, it’s okay. I know.” He looked about him
before gripping her shoulder and leaning forward to whisper in her ear. Tatiana
adjusted the pick-up on the mic to compensate. “I say we hijack the Troika
and get out of here, take our chances.”
“I agree.” Lorelei rubbed
her nose gently against the lion’s before gazing into his eyes. “Then can we
eat the Oridian girls?”
Tatiana had heard enough,
killing the volume. She turned in her chair to see Katarina staring at her,
wide eyed and pale, whilst Vast sneered, pulling back the hammer on her pistol.
“You two had better get ready,” Tatiana said, voice strained and thin. “We’re
not out of this yet.”
#
Stood at the foot of the Troika’s
ramp with Lorelei beside him, Joseph looked about him at the darkened hangar.
He didn’t like it there, it stank of dead meat and poisoned blood. Tapping at
the com in his ear, he whispered, “Okay, guys, what we got?”
Hushed, furtive reports
began to slide into his ear. “Two clips for my SMG, one for my sidearm.” “Same
here, but with a frag grenade.” “One clip only, SMG.”
Joseph waited, then
exchanged a confused look with Lorelei as she listened in. Only three reports?
That wasn’t right. Joseph growled, dirty teeth bared as his lip curled. “Cas?
What you got?”
There was no reply, just a
gentle hiss of radio interference. The hairs rose on Joseph’s neck.
Instinctively he turned to Lorelei and took her hand, pulling her closer to him.
“Daniel. Go check on Cas, see what’s wrong with her.”
The reply was curt and
sheathed in static. “Wilco.”
“The rest of you get back
here.” Joseph turned to Lorelei. “What about you? What you got left?”
She shrugged. “Not much.
One clip for my SMG, and a phosphorous grenade. That’s it.”
“It’ll do. I mean, c’mon …
two Oridians? They aren’t going to be much trouble.”
“Two Oridians and a Vermiddion
Devil, Joseph.” The hushed nature of her reply and the subtle tremble in
her tone betrayed her fear.
“So what? We’ll ta—”
“Joseph!” The voice over
his radio was shaking and abrupt. “Joseph? You there? Oh, fucking Hell, Joseph!
You need to see this!”
Joseph turned away from
Lorelei, hunched as he put his hands over his ears and said, “What, Dan? What’s
wrong?”
A slow, protracted gargle
slid out of the comm set before dying on the vine.
“Dan? Answer me, Dan!”
Silence.
Joseph turned to Lorelei.
She was trembling, her knuckles bright white as she gripped her SMG. “Stay
here.”
“But Joseph!”
“Just stay here. The other
two’ll be here soon.” He turned and ran down the ramp. Reaching the deck, he
turned and headed under the Troika. His heart rate accelerated and his
hands trembled as he brought up his SMG, flicking on the torch taped to its
barrel. Raising the SMG to his shoulder, he illuminated the spot where Cas had
been stationed and advanced with long strides.
Then he stopped, heart in
his mouth. He could see them. Two bodies lying crumpled and foetal. He took a
deep breath and moved forward until he could see them. Finally the torch
revealed their fate, and he could do nothing but stare.
Eyes open and crossed,
teeth bared and gritted, the bodies were contorted and sculpted into studies of
a painful death. The veins looked thick and swollen below their skin. Stepping
forward, Joseph looked closer. What were they? Those things breaking the skin?
Out of the burgeoning veins sprouted black and twisting stems. Sheathed in thorns and tiny black leaves, they were already flowering as Joseph looked on, dark, bitter smelling roses rearing and swelling like engorged penises. Joseph’s hand went to his mouth and he turned away, going down on one knee as he retched, his empty stomach producing nothing but water and acid.
Eyes watering, he looked up
into the darkness. Nothing. He tapped at his comm set. “Lorelei? Lorelei, do
you hear me?”
Lorelei didn’t answer. All
he heard was a rhythmical scratch, like an old record. Finally, out of the
fuzz, a voice emerged. “I spy with my little eye…”
Eyes like saucers he looked
to and fro, the beam of his torch scything through the darkness as he twisted
back and forth, sweeping the hangar with his SMG. Nothing. Still the voice
whispered over his comm set. “Something beginning with *tk*. Something
beginning with *tk*. Something beginning with *tk*...”
Panting, he sprang to his
feet, and began to run toward the Troika’s ramp. His torch fell upon a
figure in his way, and he stopped in his tracks. A mannequin in a black dress,
it stared at him with one real eye sunk into a painted wooden face. Her voice materialised
in front of her face. “Something beginning with you.”
His mouth parted and his
teeth bared as he spat at her, hissing and feral. He brought up the SMG and fired a protracted burst at the wooden girl.
His vision was obscured as the flash of his gun painted the scarred hull of the
Troika above and the dead flesh of the deck below bright white and deep
black. His spent cartridges pattered at his feet, and the grumble of his SMG
echoed about the hangar, drowning out his long, feline wail.
He stopped, gulping breath,
squinting as his eyesight adjusted to the dark once more. She was gone. Not
even a body. “Oh, God, oh fuck. Oh, please, help me, someone.” He ran for the
ramp.
#
With Katarina leaning over
her shoulder, Tatiana’s shoulders sagged. They’d all seen the death of the
Moreaus. They’d seen the wooden mannequin girl. “Oh, Christ on a bike,” she
said, biting down on a wave of pain and nausea.
“Tatiana? What are we gonna
do?”
“I don’t know, Kat. I just
don’t know.” She massaged her clammy temples with stiff fingers. The wooden
mannequin, could that be Crepitus’s daughter? The one Ivan had warned them
about. A few mangy Moreaus she could handle, but this?
She took a deep breath,
calming herself, finding that secret place inside and tapping it for strength
of mind. “Dolly? Do you copy?”
Doll Two replied over the
comm, “Affirmative, Mistress Tatiana.”
“Can you close the Troika’s
ramp from there? It’s not responding to my controls.”
“Negative, Mistress. It
would appear the relays have been damaged.”
“What about the inner
doors? Can you close them off, seal the hangar?”
“Most of them, Mistress.
There are five I am unable to seal, however.”
“Why?”
“Their servos have shorted.
They will need to be sealed manually.”
So much for that plan,
Tatiana reflected with a trace of resignation. She should have guessed it
wouldn’t be as easy as sealing off the rear of the Troika and letting
the lion and Crepitus’s daughter take each other out. “Which doors, Dolly?”
“Doors seven and twenty on
deck three. Door nine on deck one. Doors one and three in the hangar itself.”
“Okay, Dolly, seal off what
you can, we’ll take care of the rest.”
“Affirmative, Mistress.”
A series of pings sounded
from the security console as a sequence of flashes showed the doors shutting on
a plan of the ship. Tatiana pursed her lips as she put her pressed hands
together in an attitude of prayer, resting her forehead against them. “Kat?”
“Yeah?”
“Door nine, deck one.
That’s near the flight-deck. Get to it, seal it off.”
“Gotcha.”
“Vast? Get to deck three
and seal door twenty. I’ll take door seven.”
“Whoa!” Katarina grabbed
Tatiana by the shoulder. “Are you fucking crazy? Look at you! You’re white as a
fucking sheet and you can’t stand up. How the fuck do you think you can get to
the damn door, never mind seal it off?”
“Because,” Tatiana said as
she stood, shaking, “this mannequin may be Crepitus’s daughter, but I’m Gregor
Valentine’s. Now stop arguing. We don’t have much time.”
#
Joseph’s agonised howl rent
the air and echoed about the Troika’s hangar. He collapsed onto his
knees beside Lorelei’s body. Twisted and blackened by the dark lattice of black
veins that swelled beneath her skin, her back was arched off the deck, frozen
as she had clawed at the air in agony. Bitter black roses blossomed about her
body.
He didn’t even dare to
touch her. God alone knew what poison coated those thorns. “I’ll get her, Lori,
I swear.” Tears streaked the dirt on his face. “I’ll get her.”
With jerky, fearful
snatches, he stole the phosphorous grenade and SMG clip from her kit before
standing and stumbling away from her body. Wiping the tears from his eyes, he
turned and staggered toward the Troika’s interior, leaving his beloved
Lorelei at the top of the ramp. At the bottom of that ramp were the twisting,
blossoming bodies of the other Moreaus. Now only he remained. Now it was him
versus the mannequin. And when he was done with her, the Valentines were next.
#
“Tatiana?”
“I’m here, Kat.” She leant
against a bulkhead, catching her breath. Light-headed, she swayed. Her vision
was blurring, and she was struggling to hear over her heartbeat as it boomed in
her ears.
“I’ve sealed off door nine,
and Vast’s sealed off door twenty. What about you?”
“I’m…” Her voice tailed off
and she gasped for breath, hand going to the wound in her ribs. The pain! Oh,
Christ, the pain! “I’m on my way. I’m going to cut through the mess hall.”
“You should wait. Let me
and Vast get to you.”
“There’s no time Kat.” She
wanted to wait, Christ only knew. She wanted somebody to help. She wanted Boyd.
She stopped herself. No.
Not Boyd. Something had started to nag at her like a toothache. It had done
ever since they’d boarded the Troika. There was something about him.
Something had changed. His skin, the way he smelt. She’d seen that sheen
before, smelt that cologne. She didn’t know how he’d changed, she didn’t know
why, but she knew she needed answers. Until then, until she had them, they’d be
no more knights in shining armour. She was on her own.
She forced herself to
stand, and pushed against the wall before staggering down the corridor.
#
Joseph crept through the Troika,
his gentle tread lost as the cutter’s stuttering alarms tried to grab
somebody’s attention. The darkened corridors were choked with rotting Calci,
their putrid smell smothering the air. His nose twitched as she growled low and
deep. He could smell her, even through the stench of rotten flesh. He could
smell varnish, mouldy cloth, and the bitter smell of sap and dying roses. The
mannequin.
He bared his teeth,
slavering. He’d kill her. Chop her to pieces and burn her. He didn’t care what
she was. He didn’t care what black magic kept her body in motion. He was an
Eater. He was an Eater, and soon he’d have his own ship, able to fly away from
this forsaken backwater and start a new life. Maybe he’d rechristen the ship.
Maybe he’d call it Lorelei.
He turned a corner. The
corridor ahead vanished into darkness. He sniffed the air.
She was close.
#
Tatiana emerged into the
Troika’s mess hall. The light here was as bad as the rest of the cutter, but it
was enough to silhouette the plastic tables and chairs that dissected the room.
Clutching her ribs and staggering forward, she made her way across the mess as
she headed toward the door on the other side. It was quiet here, the petulant
shrieks of the alarms in the corridor muted as the mess door closed behind her.
There were no Calci here either, the air was untainted by their stench. A
delicate trace of Dolly’s cooking lingered, from the serving counter at the far
side of the room.
Suddenly another smell
assailed her. She stopped, leaning against a table as she looked about her. Her
nostrils twitched. That smell. It smelt like… varnish?
“I spy, with my little
eye,” a voice said, emerging from the shadows on the fringe of the mess,
“something beginning with ‘T’.”
In Bloom
Accompanied by a warm and putrescent breeze, a squad of skeletal Calci marched down the Balefire’s so-called spine. A corridor high and wide, its off-white bone walls were choked with a purple and red tangle of nerves and arteries, and the omnipresent glut of eye-flies. A series of puckered sphincters punctuated this organic morass.
One such sphincter opened, the noise it made wet and sloppy as trails of mucus stretched across the widening aperture. Brushing these sticky trails aside, Ivan, Boyd, Stalin, and the Moreaus stepped out and into the Balefire’s spine. Immediately they were engaged by the Calci. Boyd and Stanztrigger returned fire, standing proud as they decapitated Calci after Calci with a series of well-placed shots. Stanztrigger’s Moreaus fanned out across the spine, shaking with adrenalin and eyes wide with fright as they plastered the tunnel with long bursts from their SMGs.
As the battle raged, Ivan knelt at the rear of the party beside Stalin. The cyborg dog was flat to the ground and quaking with fear as he projected the hologram of the Balefire from his left eye. It painted an ugly picture. Red flashing contacts moved through the green schematic, closing in on both Ivan’s party and the Troika.
Ivan appraised the hologram. This was going to be harder then he’d imagined. Much harder. He had to get the Troika out of there, get the girls to safety. He tapped at his comm set. “Tatiana? Come in, yes? Do you read me, over?” There was no response and he snarled in frustration. “Stalin? Why can’t I raise her?”
“I think it’s Crepitus—he’s jamming the signal. The twins are on their own, Ivan.”
#
The comm in Tatiana’s ear spat as she stood in the Troika’s mess hall. The words were distorted and fractured beyond recognition. Not that she cared. Her arms hung limply by her side whilst she stood motionless, staring at the apparition emerging from shadows. Its old fashioned black dress blended in with the shadows, but a delicate corona framed the mannequin’s varnished wooden head as it reflected the mess hall’s meagre light. The carved face lacked expression, but the single, bloodshot eye marooned amongst its flaking paint glinted with tears.
Tatiana slumped, sitting on the edge of a table. Her shoulders sagged and a long sigh—thin and wounded—slipped from her throat. She knew she should run, or struggle, or call for help, but she couldn’t. She was so cold. Weak. And she hurt so much. Maybe it was time. Maybe it was time to just let go. She couldn’t keep fighting creatures like this.
“Don’t *tk* struggle,” the mannequin said, the voice grainy and scratched, “this will be over *tk* over *tk* over soon.” It moved toward Tatiana, skirt gliding across the floor. As it neared her it raised its wooden hands and reached for Tatiana’s face. Small, thorny shoots writhed on its fingertips.
Gunfire roared across the room, and Tatiana—jolted from her resignation—turned toward the fringes of the mess to see the lion Moreau highlighted in oranges and reds as his SMG blazed. Dust and splinters of wood surrounded the mannequin as bullets thundered into it. It pitched backward, falling against a table before crashing to the floor with a clatter.
“You bitch!” Joseph roared as he stepped forward. “You killed her! You killed my Lorelei!”
Energized, Tatiana ducked down below the level of the tables. With a grimace of pain, she put her hand to the wound in her ribs. The lion she could deal with. The mannequin will have to wait, she thought as she shivered.
The comm buzzed again. “Tatiana? Do you hear me?”
She put her hand over her mouth as she whispered into the mic. “Katarina? Where are you?”
“Matinee’s quarters. Where are you?”
“Matinee’s quarters? What?” She shook her head. Whatever Katarina was doing there wasn’t relevant right now. “I’m in the mess.”
“Yeah, well, we’re all in a mess, Tat—”
“No, not a mess—the mess. I’m in here with Joseph and some killer mannequin.”
“Killer mannequin…?” Katarina’s voice tailed off in exasperation. “For fuck’s sake. I’d give good money to meet somebody normal who wanted to kill us. Right, stay there, Tatiana. We’re coming. I won’t be long”
“No! Not you! Just send Vas—” Too late. The signal had already been cut. With a frown and mutter of “Stubborn cow,” Tatiana removed the comm set and closed her eyes. Listening carefully, she took a deep breath to steady her nerves. Over the roar of her heartbeat filling her ears, she could just make out the squeak of Joseph’s boots as he crept passed the table behind her. She listened intently, cocking her head.
The squeaking of leather stopped, and Tatiana heard a muttered “Fuck” from the lion.
She knew she needed to get him, to strike whilst he was off-guard. But Sweat ran down her face, and her limbs shook. Waves of nausea consumed her. Her head fell back and she opened her eyes before gasping and falling onto her backside, eyes wide and a gasp catching in her damaged throat.
“No sign of the mannequin,” Joseph said, standing over Tatiana and training his SMG on her. His tongue flapped about his dirty chops, and he eyed her with a salacious gluttony. “But you’ll do for a starter.”
#
“Bring out your dead!” Boyd roared over the multi-layered echoes of the Moreaus’ SMGs. Moving forward at a pace, he fired single shots from his maser, switching rapidly from target to target with a metronomic accuracy. All the while in the maelstrom of the Moreaus’ bullets that flew past him, the Calci fell like pins.
Ivan grunted and raised an eyebrow as he watched Boyd in action. Every shot counted, every movement was measured. Boyd didn’t flinch, he didn’t falter, and his face was a studying concentrated aggression. Even Ivan had to admit the Scot was impressive. Forget the booze, forget the unsavoury attraction to Tatiana, this was why Gregor had poached him from the Plague Rats all those years ago.
But for all the ferocity of the assault, the Calci weren’t done yet. Programmed to whither opposing forces by concentrating fire on the centre of mass, they ignored Boyd and unleashed their masers at Stanztrigger’s Moreaus. Three were cut down immediately, their chests vanishing in a flash of light, and one of the dead—tongue flopping from his dog mouth and eyes wide—fell beside Ivan.
“Shit! Ivan! Grenade!”
Ivan turned, chest contracting as his breath caught in his throat. Looking down, he saw the grenade—primed and about to blow—roll from the dead Moreau’s hand. Red light blinking rapidly, it settled at Ivan’s feet.
#
“On your feet, bitch.” Joseph stepped forward and grabbed Tatiana by the hair. He pulled hard, and Tatiana cried out as she rose, hands going to her head and clutching at his wrist. “You’re coming with me.”
She glared at him. “I don’t damn well think so! Get your dirty paws off me! Now!
A smile of dirty incisors blossomed on his filthy face. “That’ll be the d—”
Teeth bared, she drove her knee into his crotch with all the strength she could muster. It wasn’t the most ferocious of blows, but it did the trick. With an “Ooof!”, he staggered back, dropping his SMG as his hands cupped his aching bollocks. His weapon clattered to the floor and Tatiana wasted no time in scooping it up, crying out in pain as she flexed her torso to bend down. Biting down on the agony, she used the gun, clubbing Joseph across the jaw with its stock, his retreat arrested by a table. His head rocked back and snapped forward, eyes glazed and mouth slack. She drove the stock into his forehead, and he collapsed to the floor, eyes rolling up into his head.
She staggered, dropping the gun as she grabbed at the table edge. She ground her teeth as she squeezed her eyes shut and gasped for breath. Christ! The pain! She couldn’t go on.
She could just wait here, right? Wait for Vast and Katarina? Her eyes opened, tears rolling down her cheeks. No. She couldn’t rest. Taking out Joseph had been the easy bit. The mannequin was still here.
Legs weak, gait unsteady, she began to walk toward the mess door. Her head tipped back as she glared at the exit and sucked air through her flaring nostrils, spittle flying from her lips as she exhaled. With step after faltering step, she walked toward the door. The door began to open, the dim light beyond barely silhouetting Vast’s bulky frame as the Vermiddion stepped through.
Tatiana smiled. She was going to make it. She never doubted it. She was a Valentine. Gregor’s little girl.
She stopped in her tracks. Behind her. That smell. Varnish and mold. She turned sharply to see the shadowed mannequin stood so close Tatiana could feel the cold radiating from its body.
It reached for her. “I *tk* spy, Tatiana Valentine…”
#
Ivan winced and rose, his fingers flexing about his axe handle. He reached the grenade in two truncated strides despite his limp. He shifted his grip, taking hold of the bottom of the axe with both hands before he swung at the grenade. The clang on metal on metal, and Ivan propelled the grenade over the head of the Moreaus. It whistled through the air before landing in the thick of the Calci and exploded in a flash of fire, splintering bone and spilt blood.
As this debris whistled by, Ivan flinched and went down on one knee, covering his face with his arms. Ears ringing, stupefied by the force of the blast, it took him a moment to realise what was going on. Two more Moreaus lay dead, bodies eviscerated by the Calci’s maser fire. The arteries on the spine’s wall were damaged, and blood spat across the corridor, coating the raiding party and the remaining Calci. These last skeletal soldiers fought on, compromised by damaged limbs, but to no avail. With a roar of “I! Am! Stanztrigger!” the Moreau leader surged forward, firing, with the last of his unit in tow. Charging into the thick of their skeletal foes, they set about delivering the coup de grace with their SMGs.
Ivan blinked. He turned to his side to see Stalin lay beside him, cowering in his shadow with his paws over his eyes. Still blinking, Ivan looked for Boyd through the miasma of spraying blood. He saw him, flat in his back, his face and fatigues a chaotic mess of lacerations and tears.
He wasn’t moving.
#
With no battle cry, with no fanfare, Vast sprinted by the petrified Tatiana and thundered into the mannequin, shoulder down. Struck squarely in the chest, the mannequin was propelled backward, tumbling between a row of plastic chairs. Vast turned back to Tatiana and shoved her in the back, propelling her toward the open door.
“Vast!” Tatiana shouted. “Look out!”
On its back and then vertical in the blink of an eye, the mannequin closed in on Vast, gliding across the floor as though on casters. The Amazonian bodyguard’s lip curled, and she drew back her fist before driving it toward the mannequin’s face—only for this marauding nemesis to catch the fist in its wooden hand.
Instantly Vast’s body convulsed, the mute’s mouth gaping open in a silent scream. She collapsed to her knees, shaking violently as she pawed at her trapped hand. Her head shook to and fro, and tears and saliva flew from her face.
“Vast!” Tatiana took a step toward her. “Christ! No!”
The veins about the Vermiddion’s hand blackened and swelled, and as Tatiana stared in horrid fascination, the red skin on Vast’s hand split as delicate shoots—black and thorny—sprang forth. With as sickening rapidity, the veins on her forearm began to swell, and they too flowered even as the infection spread to her bicep.
Dumbfounded, Tatiana’s gaze switched to the mannequin. What was this creature, that it could do such a thing? That it could bring Vast—so immutable, so indestructible—to her knees? Letting go of the bodyguard, the wooden nightmare looked at Tatiana and glided toward her, that one eye glistening in the half-light.
#
The battle was over by the time Ivan staggered to Boyd, Stanztrigger and the last few Moreaus as they finished off the Calci. Reaching the Scot, wincing in pain as his bad leg agonised him, Ivan knelt beside him.
“Boyd! Wake up, yes?” Ivan slapped the bodyguard’s face. Ashen and sweaty, it was still and untroubled, like a sleeping child. Ivan slapped him again. Still no response.
Stalin trotted to Ivan’s side and peered down at Boyd. “Ooo. That doesn’t look good.”
Ivan didn’t respond; he stared at the wounded man. He looks so much like Thom, he thought. So peaceful, so calm, yes?
How many times had Ivan stroked the lush dark hair away from Thom’s face, just to stare at him whilst he slept? How many times had he stroked that cheek? Felt the prickly texture of stubble against his palm? Run his finger tips over those lips?
“Ivan? Ivan, are you listening? He needs—”
“More Calci!”
Stanztrigger’s words sliced through Ivan’s trance. Turning, he looked toward the Moreau. He and the last three of his men had been pilfering ammo and weapons from their fallen opponents, but now they were raising their weapons and firing. Ivan looked to this new threat, and his heart sank.
These were not more skeletal cyborgs, these were the zombified doppelgangers of a type Ivan had faced many times before. Loping out of the curtain of blood, tongues lolling from open mouths they came: wave after wave of undead Stanztriggers. Snarling with broken teeth, they charged at the raiding party.
#
Petrid paused within touching distance of the Tatiana, taking her time to look at the beautiful Oridian. The girl stood before her, wheezing and blinking rapidly, irises dilated. Shaking, legs quivering, she raised her fists and adopted a defensive posture. Her eyebrows knitted, she bared bloodied teeth. “Come on, den,” she said, the words slightly slurred and malformed, “letz see what you’ve got.”
Petrid remained still. She had killed so many in her time she couldn’t remember what it was to have unsullied, bloodless hands. Even before her body had finally withered away, even before father had trapped her in this wooden vessel, she had killed in his name. But none of her victims—not Theocracy, D’Kothren, or even the Long Knives—had faced their deaths quite like this. Most tried to run, some begged or even cried, but not one had looked he squarely in the eye and determined to sell their life dearly. This Tatiana Valentine—despised so by Crepitus purely for her parentage—was true royalty. She was clearly a true warrior princess. She was everything Petrid dreamed of being.
So what, then, does that make me, Petrid wondered? If Tatiana is the hero in this dark fable, what am I?
Petrid’s shoulders sank and her head lowered as she folded her hands into her lap. She knew. She’d always known. She was the villain here, the wicked witch, the evil dragon. She was Crepitus’s daughter.
She looked up again, the perennial tears streaming down her face. Tatiana continued to quake, arms shaking with increasing violence. But still she held Petrid’s gaze, still she held her ground. “I *tk* I *tk* I am sorry.” She raised her hands and reached for Tatiana’s pretty neck. “Please forgive me.”
#
One look at the zombies and Stanztrigger’s Moreau dropped their weapons, then—as Boyd had predicted—they fled, howling. Ivan sneered as they ran by him, their eyes wide with terror and limbs pumping. He watched them as they bolted, but their retreat was cut short by a further unit of skeletal Calci emerging into the spine. A burst of maser fire and the Moreaus were cut down.
Ivan turned from this new threat to the undead Stanztriggers—all teeth and broken horns—as they poured forth, grasping with rotten fingers and cracked claws. It was all over. They were trapped.
The sound of hoof on bone told him the real Stanztrigger had moved to stand beside him. And as Ivan turned to the Moreau legend, he placed a hand on Ivan’s shoulder saying, “To the death, Ivan Valentine?”
#
Tatiana would never understand what went through the mannequin’s mind as it paused. Whatever it was, whatever had caused that slight delay, probably saved the Princess’s life.
With the mannequin's flowering hands almost at her throat, Tatiana saw the lion over the row of tables behind, his face dominated by a ghastly split in its forehead. He snarled through a mask of saliva and blood. “Fucking bitches!” he shouted. “Burn in Hell!”
He swung his arm, throwing something toward them. In the darkness Tatiana couldn’t see what it was—but she knew soon enough. The object struck Petrid between the shoulder blades, instantly siring a flower of fire and heat that blossomed and engulfed the mannequin.
Tatiana fell, the wave of heat making her eyes and skin smart. She hit the floor, her instincts took over, and she rolled under a table behind her as a sticky, flaming substance splashed onto the deck. It stuck to the metal and burned fiercely.
Phosphorous, Tatiana guessed as she continued to roll out from under one table and under another, her hand clutched to her wound. She emerged into the open again and forced herself up to her knees, the effort drawing a gasp from her dry mouth.
Across the tables she could see the mannequin—shrouded in flames of rose red and calendula orange—turning to face Joseph. The Moreau drew a pistol and began to empty it into the flaming figure. Shadows quivered across the walls, and the smell of burning wood and varnish pummelled Tatiana with just as much ferocity as the heat.
Out! She had to get out! Already the mess’s sprinkler system had engaged, and water rained over Tatiana. She looked over her shoulder. The door behind her was closing. Grabbing the edge of the table, she struggled to her feet. She then took a step toward the door, and her legs gave way. She fell to the deck, the skin above her eye splitting as she smacked her head against the metal. Looking up, blood running into her eyes, she saw the door was almost closed. Once it was shut the Troika’s safety system would expel all the oxygen in the mess, choking the flames—and the occupants. She reached for it, bloody fingers splayed, but she knew it was no use.
She was going to die.
Under Pressure
The air about Ivan and
Stanztrigger shimmered and flexed as the Calci’s maser fire hit an invisible
bubble that absorbed their energies, dissipating them.
“ECF engaged, Ivan,” Stalin
said. His legs quivered and his eyes were like saucers as he stared at the
Calci hammering against the force field. The ECF generator bolted to his back
hummed low and steady.
“To the death?” Ivan winked
at Stanztrigger and smiled a grim smile. “Not just yet, sir.”
The Moreau leader raised an
eyebrow and bowed toward Ivan. “Touche, Ivan Valentine.”
Ivan looked to the undead
Stanztriggers outside the ECF bubble. The foremost were pressed flat against
the force field as—skin splitting to reveal dirty bone and putrid viscera—their
bodies distorted under the weight of the Calci pushing from behind.
To the rear of the ECF,
wave upon wave of skeletal Calci advanced, firing maser beams rendered into
harmless photons by the shield.
“We haven’t much time,
Ivan!” The cyborg dog turned a tight circle as the diagnostic display on the
ECF unit glowed red. “This thing’s going to blow, Ivan!”
Ivan frowned and his
fingers flexed upon the shaft of his axe. Stalin had bought them time, but
little else. Now they needed to get away. “Okay,” he said as he knelt to grab
the prone and bleeding Boyd by the collar. “Let it.”
#
Tatiana lay on the deck,
the metal beneath her cheek cold and wet. Her sopping body-stocking stuck to
her, and the smell of burning wood and varnish filled her nostrils. The
pitter-patter of the sprinkler’s rain synchronised with the crackle of the
flaming mannequin. Then the sound of heavy boots on the deck intruded on her
semi-conscious state. She stirred, eyes flickering. Was that Joseph? Was he
coming to finish her off?
“C’mon, sis, get up!”
Tatiana blinked. Katarina!
Vision black and hearing dull, Tatiana was barely cognisant of her
sister—little more than a black mass topped with an azure smudge—emerging from
the darkness, grabbing her under the arms and hauling her across the mess
floor. Limp, Tatiana’s legs and hands dragged across the wet metal, grazing her
knees and knuckles.
“Kat,” Tatiana managed to
gasp. “Door. Closing.”
Tatiana could see the
door—now little more than a diminishing slice of light—was almost shut. Then
something blocked out that light: something tall and broad that stood between
her and the door. Could it be…? Was that Vast?
A red blur, the Amazonian
bodyguard reached the door. The whine of servos and a bleating alarm told
Tatiana Vast was holding the door open even as the mannequin’s flowers bloomed
along her arm.
“You two! Stop!” Joseph’s
voice—and the sound of gunshots—pierced Tatiana's fugue and the hiss of the
sprinkler as bullets ricocheted off the deck, flowers of sparks stabbed at her
with petals hot and yellow.
“Sis, I need you to get
up!” Katarina’s steps were faltering.
Tatiana shook her head,
clearing the cobwebs. She managed to get onto her knees before Katarina hauled
her to her feet. With her sister’s arms about her, Tatiana lurched forward,
tottering in the edge of collapse. More bullets sped by her.
They were nearly at the
door. Now she could see Vast—with her back against the door frame and arms
locked straight—holding its leading edge. Her right arm was a jumbled mess of
roots and flowering buds as the black and poisonous infection continued to
spread up and over her bicep. Her white teeth were gritted and her eyes wide
and wild as her nostrils flared rhythmically. Water from the sprinkler cascaded
across her skin, mingling with sweat and blood.
Nearly there—oh, so
nearly—the twins staggered toward Vast. Another gunshot, and Katarina flexed,
back arching as she cried out, arms going into the air. Momentum carried her
forward and—legs bent and uncoordinated—she fell at Vast’s feet, face creased
with pain.
#
“Let it blow! Are you
crazy?”
“Shut up, yes?” Ivan stood
over Stalin. With his axe held between his knees and his other hand still
grasping Boyd’s collar, he tapped at the ECF’s tiny keypad. A tiny ping
and the device detached from the dog’s back. It rolled down his armoured ribs
and fell to the wet, bloody floor.
“Let’s go!” Ivan grabbed
his axe and hauled on Boyd, Stanztrigger helping to pull the unconscious Scot
across the deck. A shrill beep—increasing in pitch—told them they had seconds
to get clear before the ECF—unable to cope with the weight of Calci pressing
against it—finally detonated. To their left lay one of the spine’s
sphincter-like portals. Reaching this exit, Ivan stabbed at a clitoral pearl
nestled in the flesh beside it with his axe handle, and the aperture opened.
The four of them had barely stepped into the arterial corridor beyond before
the ECF finally blew.
The force of the blast
shredded the Calci, the bone of the corridor, its arteries and nerves, and the
sphincter. Fire and debris burst through the door, lashing at Ivan and his
party. Caught up in the force of the explosion, lacerated by its shrapnel and
burnt by its fire, they were flung down the corridor and fell motionless to the
sticky deck.
#
Tatiana reached Katarina.
Now it was her turn to grab her sister under the arms, the dampness of her
clothes cool against her fingers. Pitching herself toward the door, she didn’t
so much pull Katarina over the threshold as simply cling on to her as she fell
through it, the pair landing in a wet and undignified heap.
“Vast!” Tatiana shouted.
“Door!”
Teeth still gritted, eyes
still wide and feral, Vast stepped to one side, letting the door go. It slammed
shut, amputating Vast’s infected arm, slicing through her tattooed bicep. The
mute’s face distorted in pain, and she collapsed to the deck, bucking and
kicking as blood cascading from her wound.
Tatiana’s blood ran cold as
she stared at the Vermiddion. Vast grabbed at her arm, trying to stem the flow
of blood, only for the torrent to pour from between her fingers. Behind
Tatiana, Katarina lay motionless.
She turned to the door, a
series of rapid thuds pricking her attention. Through the window she could see
Joseph—snarling—beating against the glass with the butt of his pistol. His mane
was silhouetted by the orange of the flaming mannequin, the colour twitching.
“Bitch!” The speaker to the
side of the door hissed and popped as it struggled to convey the Moreau’s
vitriol. “Let me out! You bitch! I’ll gut you! I’ll—” He turned, and Tatiana
had the briefest glimpse of his eyes shining bright with fear before fire swept
across the window, the black and blistering mannequin within embracing the
screaming lion.
Lurching to her feet,
Tatiana pitched herself against the door. And as she pressed her forehead to the
window, she watched a frenetic Joseph’s skin blister and darken before
splitting and peeling away from the bone. His dirty clothes and ammunition went
up like tinder, and small explosions in his belt tore his hips and spine to
shreds, legs dangling as the mannequin squeezed him tight.
With Katarina motionless
and Vast bleeding to death behind her, something black and ugly seized Tatiana.
“Good riddance,” she said before spitting against the glass. “Burn in Hell.”
Tatiana looked to her
companions. The Vermiddion had managed to stand and, with faltering steps,
stumbled to a clutch of pipes and conduits that lined all the Troika’s
walls. Grasping one of the pipes, she ripped it in two and bent the metal
outward. A jet of gas poured forth, and—with a practised flourish—Vast seized
and lit a lighter in her pouches, using it to ignite the gas. As the fire
twisted and lunged, she shoved her mutilated limb into the flame, cauterizing
and cleansing the wound whilst her face distorted with another silent scream.
Tatiana put her hand over
her mouth and nose, turning away as the smell of burning flesh assailed her.
Her sight fell upon Katarina. As Tatiana watched, her sister’s eyelids
flickered open. Her face was vague and soft, but her eyes quickly focused and
her visage hardened, brow furrowing. Only now could Tatiana clearly see the
flak-vest she wore, the name Matinee stencilled across its chest. “Joseph?”
Katarina mumbled, pushing herself up. “The mannequin?”
Looking back through the
window, Tatiana saw that the sprinklers had stopped and the fire had ceased,
all air in the mess expelled by the Troika’s emergency systems. At the
centre of the mess lay Joseph’s twisted, burnt body and, knelt beside it, the
black and blistered mannequin, Motionless, dress destroyed, its hands lay in
its lap and its single melted eye streaked down its face like birdshit.
“They’re dead, Kat.”
Tatiana leant her head against the window and closed her eyes. Jesus, that felt
good. So cool and smooth. “It’s over.”
“Like fuck, sis.” There was
a bite to Katarina’s tone that—on a different day—might have rankled Tatiana.
“Crepitus is still out there. And Ivan.”
#
Ivan lay on his back, the
stretcher beneath him barely masking the sharpness of the rubble beneath. His
sopping fatigues stuck to him, and the smell of burning wood and petrol filled
his nostrils. The pitter-patter of rain synchronised with the crackle of the
fire consuming Ferroc Boon. Then the sound of heavy boots on the rubble
intruded on his semi-conscious state. He stirred, eyes flickering. Was that
Thom? Was he coming to help him?
“Ivan? C’mon, Ivan. Get
up.”
Ivan blinked. Thom! Vision
black and hearing dull, Ivan could barely make out the shape that leant over
him. But he could smell him. The leather. The sweat. He reached up, groping at
the pale smudge that looked down on him. His fingers tingled as he touched
soft, tender skin and greasy stubble. “Thom? Is that you?”
A sting as the shape
slapped him across the cheek. “Don’t be stupid, Ivan, It’s me. Boyd. Now c’mon.
We’ve need to get moving.”
Ivan blinked again, craning
his head to try and look about him. His vision started to clear as a zesty
smell of citrus revived him. Brow furrowed, he turned toward Boyd. He could see
the Scot now, all cuts and bruises. “Do you…? Do you smell that?”
“I dinnae smell nothing.”
Boyd grasped him under the arm and heaved. “Now get up, old man.”
Ivan looked about him as
Boyd dragged him to his feet. They’d been thrown clear of the mutilated door.
The ground was littered with bits of Calci bone and rotten flesh, and smoke
combined with the smell of burnt flesh as it circled and slithered about them.
The deck was awash with more blood, the thick red tide pissing from the
corridor’s arteries severed in the blast. Eye-flies crawled about the walls and
over the four interlopers.
Ivan looked at Boyd, the
lacerations about the Scot’s face already knitting together. He looked into
Boyd’s eyes, the Scot staring straight back, his head lowered. On the way to
healing already, yes? There was no ignoring it now. It just wasn’t right. It
just wasn’t human.
“Okay, Boyd, what is goin
o—”
“Ivan! Look!”
Ivan turned, the urgency
and sharpness in Stalin’s voice telling him something was wrong. Sure enough,
the dog stood beside Stanztrigger, the Moreau collapsed against the wall. Ivan
limped to them, Boyd by his side.
Ivan knelt beside the
Moreau. “Stanztrigger? You are okay, yes?”
The Moreau blinked, his
breathing short and laboured, his body peppered with shrapnel. The flesh
beneath his fur was tinged a ghoulish green. Ivan pointed at the diseased
flesh, asking, “What is that?”
“He was bitten by a Calci
back on his ship.” Boyd’s tone was heavy, and he didn’t look Ivan in the face.
“He’s infected, turning into one of them. He’s fighting it, but he doesn’t have
much time.”
Boyd took Stanztrigger by
the shoulders as Ivan looked on. “Stan? C’mon, man. Can you hear me?”
Ivan looked at the Scot. He
hasn’t heard that inflection in the Scot’s voice since they’d buried Matinee at
Potter’s Field.
“I can hear you, Boyd.”
Stanztrigger smiled as he opened his eyes. He looked vague and stupefied.
“Boyd. An acronym, I presume. Bring Out Your Dead. Is that what they called
you?”
“Not now, Stan. Are you
okay?”
“And what is your real
name, I wonder? What secrets do you hide?”
“Stanztrigger. Not now.”
Stanztrigger focused in the
Scot, nostrils flaring. “What ails thee? I smelt it, you know? Your disease,
your mutation.”
Ivan’s blood ran cold His
eyes narrowed, and his hand tightened about his axe. An acronym, indeed?
Mutation? Curiouser and curiouser, yes?
Boyd slapped Stanztrigger
across his chops. “Pull yourself together! We need you! Crepitus is out there,
and he’s laughing at you. He’s laughing at you right now. You need to get up.
You need to get up and fight, damn it!”
Ivan’s nostrils twitched.
That smell again. That smell of citrus. It had revived him, but would it work
on Stanztrigger?
Sure enough, the Moreau’s
senses appeared to clear. He shook his head and put a hand to his forehead. He
groaned, eyes squeezed shut. “We need to hurry. I can’t fight this much
longer.”
“This is stupid, Ivan.”
Stalin’s head sank as he banged his tail on the sticky deck. “We should get out
of here. There’s no way we can beat Crepitus like this.”
“Be quiet, Stalin.”
“No! Shan’t!” Look at us!
You’re a cripple, Boyd’s wounded, and he’s
going to one of them soon! What makes
you think we can overrun the Balefire and kill Crepitus? Moreover, why should
we?”
“Enough—”
“No, Ivan! It’s your fight,
not ours! If you don’t get on with Crepitus, fine, you go see him. Me? I want
to go home.”
Ivan bared his teeth and
glared at the dog. He didn’t know what enraged him more: the fact Stalin was
defying him, or the fact that—after all they’d been through since being chased
out of Oridia, after all Stalin had done to duck trouble and avoid
confrontation—this was the time he chose to show some balls.
“He’s right, Ivan.”
“What?”
“He’s right.” Boyd’s eyes
bored into Ivan. How like Thom’s they were. So dark and alive. “This is a fight
we can’t win.”
Ivan shook his head, just
to clear it. That smell again, that delicious trace of Thom. He had to ignore
it. He must. He couldn’t be sidetracked now. “No, you’re wrong, both of you. If
we leave now, if we let Crepitus survive, he will come again, yes? And he will
keep coming, until we are dead—us and the twins.” He pointed as Boyd with his
axe. “And don’t think their deaths will be quick, either, Boyd—or whatever your
name is. They will die long, excruciating deaths followed by eternity of undead
servitude.” Ivan’s nostrils flared at he grasped the axe with both hands. “I
will not allow this. I will fight to my death to stop it. And if you will not
fight, I fight alone, yes?”
“‘And if one prevails
against him’,” Stanztrigger said as he forced his diseased body off the deck
and stood on wavering legs, clutching at his wounded arm, “‘two shall withstand
him; and a three-fold cord is not quickly broken.’”
They turned to the Moreau,
and Ivan raised an eyebrow. He knew that quote. “Ecclesiastes?”
Stanztrigger nodded.
“Chapter four, verse twelve.”
“But there’re four of us!”
“You don’t count, dog. You
are a coward.” Stanztrigger turned to Ivan and Boyd. “Now, we must cease this
bickering, and we must act. The longer we pause, the more momentum we lose.”
Boyd glanced at Ivan and
then back to Stanztrigger before shaking his head, saying, “Okay, but don’t say
I didn’t warn you.”
#
On the Balefire’s
bridge, Crepitus lowered his head and closed his eyes. He could feel it. Gone.
His only daughter. And the Valentines were to blame. Again.
One of his skeletal crew
continued a flat, emotionless report. “Units Hydra Nine and Epsilon Six
destroyed, as well as Zed waves one and two. Spine badly damaged. Loss of power
to life support across decks one through five. Batteries nine—”
“Enough!” Crepitus opened
his eyes and clenched his fists before taking his antiquated revolver from its
holster. “You three!” He turned to the Bone Valentines, the three of them
lurking on the periphery of the bridge. “With me. This ends now. We find Ivan
and his little friends before they do any further damage. Then we skin his
nieces.” He strode toward the bridge’s main exit, the vulva opening at his
approach.
The Bone Valentines bowed
their heads. “We are the dead,” they said in unison, before moving into line
behind their master.
Keep Talking
Ivan, Boyd, Stanztrigger and Stalin moved cautiously down the corridor. Whilst the three soldiers looked about with calm observation, Stalin’s eyes were wide with fear, and he panted and trembled. The walls of this corridor were little more then thin flesh stretched over arching ribs. Eye-flies fed off the rotten walls and their rank skin. A hot wind bore stench of decay, and viscous goo hung from the roof in thick, trembling strands.
An eerie silence had dominated the corridor, but now that silence was savaged as Crepitus’s voice hissed out of the speaker in Stalin’s back, saying, “Ivan? Can you hear me Ivan? I know you can. I know that dog is monitoring my communications.” A pause. The four of them glanced at one another. “You’ve done it. You’ve finally killed my daughter. Not content with stealing my son from me, my Skullion, you’ve taken Petrid too. Well, I hope you’re proud. I hope you enjoy your little pyrrhic victory, because you haven’t long to live. You and those teenage sluts. Get ready, Ivan. Get ready to d—”
The rant ended as Stalin cut the transmission.
“He’s really mad now, Ivan.” The dog put a paw across his eyes as he lowered his head and shook it.
“Wait...” Boyd’s brow creased, “...Did he say Skullion was his son? Thom Skullion? The Omega Hammers’ old medic?”
Ivan nodded, turning away as tears pricked his eyes. “Yes. Gregor and I captured him years ago, back when we fought Crepitus in DeAngelis campaign, yes? He was just called Skullion then.” He turned back to Boyd. “He swapped sides and adopted name Thom shortly afterwards.”
“So who’s this ‘Petrid’?”
“Thom’s sister.” Ivan’s smile was sardonic and thin. “As much as he hated Crepitus, he never forgave himself for leaving Petrid behind. She was very sick, very frail. Only Thom’s healing powers kept her alive—her and her mother. Crepitus turned Petrid into some wooden monster soon afterward, just to keep her alive and strike at Thom.”
“So, where’s the mother?”
Ivan shuddered. Patina? He had no idea. And he prayed to God he never found out …
#
Striding down one of the Balefire’s fleshy corridors, Crepitus stopped, his rant over. He turned to the Bone Valentines. The skeletal facsimile of Ivan stood at the front of the trio. His ushanka and parka were worn and scarred. Head lowered, he stared at Crepitus, his one robotic eye twinkling in the semi-darkness.
“Can you see them?” Crepitus asked.
The response was delayed as tiny scanner readings—conveyed by the flies about the ship—scrolled over Bone Ivan’s eye. The green image stopped, and a red contact flashed bright and angry in the centre of the iris. “I have them, yes?” His voice was synthesised and harsh, forced into the world by an eroded speaker in his spine.
“Where?”
“They are approaching the Womb.”
#
“This,” Stalin said, voice a nasal whine, “is such a bad idea.”
“We have to destroy Womb to have chance of success.”
“The Womb? Why don’t I like the sound of that?”
Ivan turned to Boyd, about to answer the Scot’s question, when Stalin cut in, saying, “Because you know what’s good for you?”
“What is this ‘Womb’?” Stanztrigger’s voice was thin and drawn, and he leant against the fetid wall to draw breath.
“Balefire’s power-source, yes?”
“Power-source?” Boyd looked about them, a sweep of his hand taking in biomechanical decay of the corridor and the ship beyond. “What kind of power drives a monstrosity like this?”
#
A cavernous chamber that rose from the bottom of the Balefire to the top, the Womb’s floor was lit red by pockets of glowing pearls nestling in the walls, Thick pillars of bone rose from the deck to the ceiling, calcified spears of bone sprouted from their surface. Clusters of computer banks choked the base of the columns, fleshy umbilical cords running from these terminals only to be lost under an uneven blanket of shit that coated the deck. This vast chamber’s circular walls of tibia and fibula formed millions of tiny cocoons lined with dank flesh and flexing muscle. Each wept the ethereal wail of a lost and frightened soul.
Boyd leant forward, hand over his nose to block out the stench. He peered into one of the chambers. “Ivan? Are they…?”
“Ghosts? Yes.”
Ivan looked at the Womb. It was every bit as horrific as he remembered. A hideous nest of spectral children, torn from their wombs and trapped here, the dreadful vessel powered by the lost potential of those countless lives. The lost love. The lost hope. The lost dreams. All stolen from them, all harvested by Crepitus's foul and shitty magic. Ivan gripped his axe so hard his fingers ached.
“Magnificent, isn’t it?” The vitriol in the voice was palpable. “My greatest achievement, wouldn’t you say?”
Ivan, Boyd, Stanztrigger and Stalin fell into a circle, the Scot and the Moreau sweeping the vista before them with their guns. Ivan’s lip curled as his eyes narrowed. He was here, finally. The man who’d taken his self-respect from him, who’d forced him to go begging on his knees to the ghost of a dead friend, and who’d reduced him to a wailing and pitiful old man. Now it was time for revenge.
“And you, Ivan? You like it so much you’ve come back?”
Ivan couldn’t see him. He looked to and fro, but all he could see were the calcified pillars.
“Why? What are you hoping to find? Vassilissa’s children? Or more of Gregor’s little bastards?” A brittle laugh rattled through the Womb. “Or maybe yours? On, no, wait. I forgot. You’re one of them, aren’t you? A dirty little queer.”
Ivan’s breath caught in his chest, and his cheeks burnt. He trembled. The bastard! How dare he? He would pay for that. “Come out, Crepitus!” Such was his anger he could barely form the words. “Let’s see you!”
“You’d never have your own children, would you? You were always content to steal other peoples'.” Crepitus stepped out from behind a pillar, pistol raised and trained on Ivan. He looked every bit as threadbare and spiteful as Ivan remembered: his liver-spotted face a mask of bitter contempt, and his sneering, black teeth. “Like my boy, my Skullion.”
“Ivan!” The panic in Stalin’s voice betrayed their perilous position, and three further figures stepped into the open to surround them. Ivan looked over his shoulder, and he couldn’t suppress a tiny, ironic smile. The Bone Valentines. This went from bad to worse.
He turned back to Crepitus, looking the aged technomancer in his evil little eyes before nodding at the pistol in his withered fingers. “Better make that shot count, yes? Because if you mi—”
With a cry somewhere between vitriol and anguish, Crepitus fired, the old gun bucking in his hand. Ivan flinched, ducking down as the bullet whistled over his head. With two painful strides Ivan moved behind a pillar, crying out as he put a hand to his bad leg. Another,shot, and chips of bone stabbed at Ivan’s shoulder as a bullet ricocheted off the bone colonnade at his back.
That first move made, the fight began in earnest. The Bone Valentines raised their pistols and fired, the chatter of their gunfire echoing about the Womb. As the bullets stabbed by, Stalin bolted, head low and eyes like saucers as he sprinted for cover. Boyd ducked and ran sideways, firing his maser as he went. Stanztrigger fired as he advanced on Bone Gregor.
“Stanztrigger! Down!”
Ivan’s call came too late. Even as Stanztrigger's barrage blew holes in its skeletal frame, even as its black fatigues and cyber-enhanced limbs were shredded, Bone Gregor fired back. Bullets thudded into Stanztrigger’s body, and the Moreau fell back into the shit, face creased in pain. His maser fell from bent and crooked fingers, hands shaking in a violent agony.
As the remains of Bone Gregor plopped into the mire, Boyd reached cover. Cramming himself under a bank of terminals, on his knees in the faeces, he kept firing at Bone Vassilissa. The automaton ducked back behind a column as Boyd’s maserbeams tore into the pillar. It attempted to emerge again and fire, but a further burst from Boyd drove it back.
“Is this the best you could muster, Ivan? Are these
all the allies you have left?” More mocking laughter. “Where are Yevgeny and
More gunfire, and Bone Ivan stepped toward Boyd, firing as it bore down on him. Its bullets rained on and about the Scot, but he didn’t falter. Bringing his maser to bear, he fired back, and the skeleton jerked and span before falling under the barrage.
“Ivan the Terrible, with his fearsome Omega Hammers, reduced to what? That coward Stalin, a sick Moreau—did you say that was Stanztrigger?—and some Scottish ruffian? Pitiful.”
Bone Vassilissa now sprang into view and fired again. Even as its bullets pelted Boyd, the besieged man managed one last volley, decimating Vassilissa’s skull. It collapsed into the excreta just as, blood bubbling from his wounds and his mouth a rictus of pain, Boyd’s hands collapsed to the filthy deck, fingers loose about his gun.
“All alone now, Ivan. Just you and me.”
That is it, yes? Keep talking, Ivan thought as he ducked and edged his way toward another column. Keep taunting.
Ivan moved again, reached another column and pressed against it. He paused, taking a deep breath as his fingers flexed on the axe. With eyes closed he drew a mental image of the Womb. If Crepitus hadn’t moved, he should be just…
...about...
...here!
He stepped out from behind the pillar, axe raised.
Crepitus wasn’t there.
Ivan’s eyes flicked from left to right. His blood ran cold, and the hairs on the back of his neck rose. Where was he? Where had the dark sorcerer gone? His muscles tensed, and he shrank by inches as his body coiled and compressed, his nostrils flared and his eyes widened, senses primed and alert.
There! It was little more than a squelch, the sound of a boot in shit, but it was enough. Ducking, he moved forward as a bullet whistled by him and staggered to the cover of a bone pillar. The brief impression of Crepitus’s black uniform and a muzzle flash pricked his peripheral vision as he looked over his shoulder, a further round scything by.
“Don’t be sad, Ivan. You should celebrate. After all, it isn’t every day one witnesses the end of not one great mercenary legacy, but two. Who would have thought it? After all these years I will finally bring a close to both Stanztrigger and his Eaters, and the Valentines and their Omega Hammers. Glorious.”
He was so close Ivan could almost smell his rank breath and dirty clothes. Ivan squeezed his eyes shut, gulped for breath, held it, and sprang into the open. Crepitus stood no more then three feet away from him, and the pair both paused as they each looked into the other's face. A ghost of a smile drifted across Crepitus’s lips before he aimed his gun at Ivan.
Exhaling, Ivan swung the axe, knocking the pistol from his enemy’s grasp as it fired, the bullet careening by. Crepitus took a step back, brows raised in alarm, eyes wide. Ivan pressed forward. A further swing of the axe, and it bit into the technomancer’s shoulder.
“Stop! Stop, now!” He tried to grab at the axe, but to no avail. Ivan tugged, releasing the blade from the wood of Crepitus’s torso, and swung again. Crepitus raised his hands to protect himself, but the axe cleaved his right hand in two. “No! You mustn’t! Stop! I order you!”
Another swing, and the other hand shattered and fell away from the wrist, leaving a stake of splintered wood. Crepitus staggered back against a bone pillar, ruined hands falling by his side. “Stop this instant!”
“Stop?” Ivan swung again, this time ruining the old sorcerer’s other shoulder, which splintered and bent outward from the torso, the arm now hanging at an odd angle across his belly. “Stop? You try to kill us, pursue us across Pagentorns, threaten my nieces, and you ask me to stop?” Another blow, and the maladjusted arm was cleaved from the body. “Never! This ends, and this ends today…yes?” Ivan heaved one last time, only for Crepitus to dodge sideways. The axe rammed into the pillar and stuck fast.
“Ends? Today?” Crepitus sneered as he sprang forward, slashing Ivan across the eye with the splintered stake of his wrist. Ivan cried out, hand going to his face as an agonising pain erupted from his eyeball. “You ignorant lack-wit!” Another slash, and he gouged a bloody line across Ivan’s hand. “Even if you managed to kill me today, don’t you realise she’s still out there?” A further lunge, and Ivan staggered as the stake gored a hole in his chest. “You’ve killed her daughter. Even if you escape me, you know she’ll come for you, don’t you?”
Ivan’s feet went from under him, and he fell, hitting the bone column behind him hard. A tearing of flesh and a sear of pain subsumed his world as one of the pillar’s calcified spurs speared his shoulder, the bloody tip bursting out of his body stocking. The axe fell from his grasp. He couldn’t see. All was blood and pain. He rubbed desperately at his face with the palm of his eyes to try and shift the blood. It couldn’t end like this! He had to stop Crepitus! He had to end him, end his evil, his reign of darkness, his black wizardry.
He cleared the blood from his eyes, fought the pain with quick and shallow breaths. The battered and bent Crepitus stalked toward him, wrist drawn back to deliver that last dolorious blow. “Goodbye, Ivan Valentine. Of all the souls I have crushed, you have been the most resilient. But all things die.” A black smile. “Except me, of cour—What on Earth?”
Blinking rapidly, Ivan made out a black and hunched shape rising from the deck. Crooked and bent, its movements were slow and pained.
“‘For all our days are passed away in thy wrath,’” the shape said. Now Ivan smiled a black smile. That voice! Stanztrigger! “‘We spend our years as a tale that is told.’”
Stanztrigger burst forward, falling upon Crepitus even as the wizard stabbed him in the belly. The pair fell into the filth, locked together in a desperate and bitter struggle. Focusing, Ivan saw Crepitus using what remained of his arm to hold Stanztrigger at bay. By now, however, the Eaters’ leader was more Calci than Moreau. Thick, green saliva oozed from his green chops as his teeth snapped and lunged. Broken claws bit into the skin of Crepitus’s head, gouging at the flesh and stabbing at the eyes.
“No!” Crepitus’s shrieks reverberated about the Womb. “Not like this! Please! Ivan! Help me, Ivan! Help me!”
Ivan gritted his teeth and forced himself forward, crying out in sheer agony as the bone spear left his shoulder with a dreadful wet slurp. Once free, he fell to his hands and knees, head hung low.
“Ivan! Please! Please!”
Ivan turned his head slowly, the pain across his
trapezius searing and savage. Stanztrigger ripped Crepitus’s arm from the
socket before casting it aside. He fell upon the technomancer’s head, mauling.
The Moreau’s teeth ripped through the flesh, his claws pierced the exposed
muscle, and his tongue lapped at the gushing blood. Stanztrigger ripped the
head from its wooden shoulders and dashed it against the deck.
The dying scream of the black sorcerer echoed about the Womb and Ivan could have sworn the ghostly wails of the unborn stopped, just for a moment, as if to enjoy the moment.
“Ivan? We need to go. Now.”
Ivan laughed to himself, sardonically. Stalin. Back now the fighting is all but over. Typical, yes? Ivan rose to his knees and looked at the cyborg dog. He was staring at Stanztrigger and trembling.
“We need to get out of here before he finishes eating Crepitus. We’ll be next.”
Ivan didn’t reply, he just reached out and picked up the axe. He leant on it as he used it for leverage and rose to his feet. Move, old man. Ignore the pain. Ignore the blood. They can wait. Stanztrigger needs you. He needs you now. You owe him this, yes?
With faltering steps, Ivan moved to stand beside the Moreau. Mouth full of brain-matter, smashed skull held to his lips, what was once Stanztrigger turned sharply to glare at Ivan. It shrank away, coveting the skull as it snarled.
“It has been...” Ivan had to stop and gather his breath, “...an honour, yes?”
It looked at him, and something shifted in its face. A trembling of the eyebrows, a spark of recognition, and a subtle nodding of the head. It knew what was coming, and what little of Stanztrigger remained in there was grateful.
One last heave of the axe, and Ivan decapitated the legend.
“That’s great, Ivan. Now can we g—Oh, shit.”
Eyes closed, Ivan’s shoulders sagged as his head fell back. Now what?
The answer was metronomic and uniform. Skeletal Calci moving with perfect synchronisation and purpose, they were marching into the Womb en masse. Lining the walls of the chamber, they trained their weapons on Ivan and Stalin.
Ivan’s laugh was shallow and resigned. It was all over. Crepitus had won after all.
A sha-chick of a gun being reloaded beside him, and Ivan turned to see the bloody and torn Boyd by his side. They smiled at one another and, for the first time since they had left Oridia, the smiles were genuine.
“To the death?” Boyd asked.
Ivan nodded. “To the death.”
They turned to face the Calci, Ivan with his axe, Boyd with his maser. Jaws set in defiance as they awaited the inevitable, they made no quips, remonstrations or clever sound-bites. They merely faced their deaths with dignity and poise. Even Stalin bared his teeth to growl and snarl, perhaps choosing to die with a little self-respect.
#
“Oh fuck.”
“I see it, Kat. I see it.” Back on the flight-deck and slumped in the pilot’s seat, skin clammy and cold, light-headed and short of breath, Tatiana looked at the TAC monitor above her station. Multiple red contacts moved through the green schematic of the Balefire, all zeroing in on the Troika.
Tatiana’s throat contracted, her eyes filled with tears. This wasn’t fair. They couldn’t beat the Calci. Not like this.
“Vast? Are you in position?” Kat’s voice was thin and weary. Tatiana turned to see her slumped over the security station, a cigarette dangling from her chewed lips. Head in her hands, she stared at the monitors before her. One of them showed Vast—seemingly oblivious to the fact she’d recently become an amputee—waiting at the Troika’s ramp, pistol at the ready. She turned to the security camera and nodded, thumbing the hammer back on her pistol.
Tatiana looked away, but not before lingering on the dark shape on the periphery of the screen. The Moreau Lorelei, body twisted and punctured, lay at the top of the ramp, the black flowers that had signalled her demise droopy and dying.
“What we gonna do, Tatiana?”
She took a deep breath, trying to find her calm place, trying to focus. It didn’t work. A thousand thoughts besieged her. Should they run? Should they abandon Ivan, Stalin, and Boyd? What if they were already dead? What good would fighting do then? And, even if they did run, wouldn’t Crepitus just track them down?
“Tatiana?” Kat’s voice rose an octave as panic began to set in.
Tatiana closed her eyes, chin falling onto her chest as tears began to roll down her cheeks. “I don’t know,” she whispered.
“What about Ivan? Have you—”
“Yes!” Tatiana slammed her palms upon the arms of her chair as she glared at her sister. “I tried again and again! He’s not there! Either Crepitus is jamming the signal or he’s… he’s…” She couldn’t finish the sentence. She couldn’t bear to think about that. She turned away and put her head in her hands, sobbing.
Above them, the speaker in the flight-deck’s ceiling suddenly buzzed and squawked. “grizzatiana? Katarina? Do you copy, over?”
The twins turned to the speaker. Heart in her mouth and tears staining her cheeks, Tatiana dared not hope. Could it be…? Was that…?
“This is Ivan. We are on our way...yes?”
#
The Calci marched in the hangar, spreading out to surround the Troika …
… and Ivan, Boyd and Stalin lead them.
Supporting one another, Ivan and Boyd walked toward the Troika’s ramp, Stalin trotting along beside them with his head in the air and his tail wagging. Ivan looked to the top of the ramp to see an incredulous Vast, mouth hanging open, staring at him and the Calci beyond.
Ivan smiled a tired smile. He had expected to die in the Womb, only for the Calci—now free of Crepitus and his diabolical will—to lower their weapons and salute him with a thunderous chorus of “We are the dead.”
The trio reached the ramp, two Calci walking beside them. One carried Stanztrigger’s body, the other held the Moreau’s head in its hands. Reaching the top of the ramp, Ivan patted Vast on the shoulder and smiled. Beside him Boyd activated his comm, saying, “It’s okay, Princess, we’re back, and we’re safe. It’s over. We won.”
The two Calci placed Stanztrigger’s remains on the Troika’s deck with a mechanical grace, and marched down the ramp to join their comrades. Ivan turned to face them. As Boyd moved to the ramp’s controls and activated the hydraulics, as the ramp began to close with a protracted whine, Ivan turned to face the Calci that lined the Balefire’s hangar. At the forefront stood Bone Ivan—bent but unbowed. They made eye-contact as the ramp began to close.
“Я вспоминаю,” the Calci said, saluting.
Ivan nodded. “Я вспоминаю,” he said, returning the salute. “I remember.”
Epilogue
Ashes to Ashes
The clearing was big and open, the ground littered with dead bark and the Balefire’s clotted blood. In its centre sat the Troika, its scared hide courted and teased by vortexes of ash caught in a stiff breeze. The cutter’s landing lights blinked, and occasional jets of steam burst from its riven hull with a gentle hiss. Beside it a pyre of the Moreaus and Calci left aboard the ship burned and crackled, painting the clearing a fiery orange. On top of the pyre lay the wooden remains of Petrid.
A little way from the Troika stood her crew. The Princesses supported the bloody Ivan whilst Stalin sat at his feet, head lowered and eyes closed. Vast stood smoking, the thick smoke and pungent scent of her jaffy stick snatched away by the wind. With their back to the fire they observed a solemn silence whilst they watched Boyd—still strong and healthy despite all he had faced—pile the last of the rocks on a grave. Stripped to the waste, his muscular body gleamed with thick and tacky sweat, and even from here, even over the horrid stench of burning corpses, Tatiana could smell her Father’s cologne.
Beyond the clearing, beyond the dead trees that lined it, the planet's weak suns set, turning the clouds of dust that crowded the horizon a delicate flesh pink shot through with veins of bloody red.
Katarina nodded toward the sky. “Where do you think they’ll go?”
“The Calci? Now they are free of Crepitus?” Ivan paused before continuing, and Tatiana looked at her Uncle whilst he considered his answer. Despite a face crossed with scars, and despite a torso buried beneath a swathe of bandages, she’d never seen him like this. There was also something different about him, something she hadn’t seen since they’d fled Oridia. He seemed taller somehow. Unbowed. “I honestly don’t know. I don’t know where they come from—no-one knows how Crepitus created them—and I don’t know how far Balefire can continue in that condition. It is badly damaged.”
“Will we see them again?”
“I fucking hope not,” Katarina said before, eyes wide and horrified, she seemed to remember where she was, and who she was with. She looked at Ivan and gulped.
The old man laughed, and Tatiana—arm about his ribs—found a subtle reassurance in the power in his frame as it flexed. “I fucking hope not too, yes?” Ivan said.
They watched Boyd, the Scot standing beside the completed grave of rock and stone. Head bowed and eyes closed, his lips moved gently as he said a few last words.
“‘For all our days are passed away in thy wrath,’” Ivan said in a tiny voice. “‘We spend our years as a tale that is told.’” Tatiana and Katarina looked at him, confused, as the old man continued, “For all the Eaters’ victories, for all the stories told about them, that they should die here, their leader should be buried here, on a back-water planet, crushed by a mad man’s revenge.”
Tatiana turned back to watch Boyd picking up an ad-hoc wooden cross he’d already prepared. As the Scot drove the cross into the pile of stones, Katarina asked her uncle, “Does this planet even have a name?”
Boyd turned away from the make-shift grave and trudged toward them, hands in the pockets of his dirty fatigues. He dragged his feet and stared into the ash on the ground. Behind him brooded the name STANZTRIGGER, burnt into the wood.
Ivan smiled. “It does now.”
The Valentine Chronicles
will continue with Frozen
© 2008 Mathew David
Spaull. All rights reserved.