www.thevalentinechronicles.com presents:
Under the Gun
by
Paul L. Mathews
Part Four
Walk Away
The patchwork creature loomed, its titanium fist
slamming toward Tatiana's head. She rolled, and the fist dented the deck where
she had lain.
A further blow, a further roll from Tatiana, and the
deck ruptured as the creature’s fist drove into the metal. It tried to extract
its hand immediately, its efforts rewarded only with the grinding of gears and
the pop and bang of an over-revved engine. Another jerk of its shoulder, and
the screech of more slipped gears, confirmed the fist was stuck fast.
This, Tatiana knew, could be the only chance she’d
get. She rolled onto her hands and knees again and staggered, at last, to her
feet. Falling back against the corridor wall, she blinked and shook her head. The
ringing in her ears faded and other sounds fought through: Katarina’s
hysterical screaming. The muffled grumble of an old engine.
Stalin scratching at the other side of Cell 2’s door, his muffled voice
begging, “Let me out! Please! Get me out!”
She blinked and focused on the creature. It grabbed
at its wrist and pulled its hand free. It turned to face her.
She had to get past this…thing, and find something to
fight with. Bare fists wouldn’t be enough. She looked about the corridor,
breathless. There had to be something here. Anything.
#
Ivan grimaced as Mother’s knife cut into Vast’s chest. She cut sure, and she cut deep, the incision
going down to the bone. The tip of her knife scratched along Vast’s sternum, and Ivan’s stomach turned. But he forced
himself to watch. He couldn’t show weakness.
“Nobody’s coming, Ivan,” the old hag said with a
jeer. “You know that, don’ you? Trick’s gonna kill your
nieces, an’ there ain’t gonna
be nobody left. There ain’t gonna
be nobody left to save you or this bitch...
“…Except you.”
She paused, nodding toward the gun at Ivan’s feet.
“An’ the only way you’re going to do that is to shoot me dead.”
Ivan’s head slumped and his shoulders sagged under
the sudden weight of his years.
Years. It had been twenty of
them since the Torch, since he’d sworn he’d never touch another gun, his
conscience unable to take the burden any longer. It had been a different life
back then, a different Ivan. An Ivan whose joints didn’t ache, whose breath
didn’t wheeze, and whose leg didn’t agonise.
He looked down at the gun. It was an Ivan that still
lurked inside him, whose mouth ran dry and whose pulse raced when he saw a gun,
one who still dreamt of glory and war and violence. Now all he had to do was
turn back the clock, let the old Ivan out, and all this would be over.
He squeezed his eyes shut. No! He wouldn’t let that
Ivan out. He couldn’t…
…Because if he did, if he set him free, he knew it
would be damn near impossible to ever get that Ivan back in his box again.
#
“Out of the way, Tatiana!”
Katarina’s shout echoed about the brig, and Tatiana looked to her sister. Stood
by the door to Cell 2, Katarina punched the controls, and the door opened. A
dagger of cold air burst from the darkness within, and Stalin followed. Tongue
hanging from his open mouth, he ran hell for leather out of the cell, his wide
eyes staring over his metal shoulder and back at the freezing cell. An instant
later he’d barrelled past Tatiana and into the makeshift monster, and the two cyborgs fell into a heap at the entrance to the brig.
Another time and Tatiana might have laughed. The
creature lay on its back, asymmetrical brow furrowed in angered confusion as
the fire behind its eyes burnt bright in the half-light. It glared at Stalin as
the dog sat on its chest, his skinthetic
features a study of confusion and fear.
“Um. Woof?” Stalin managed
to say, eyesbrows arching and teeth bared in a canine approximation of an embarrassed smile.
#
A cold sweat broke out on Ivan’s brow. He closed his
eyes as the knife opened up Vast’s belly.
He was running out of time. Vast was running out of—
His eye narrowed. Vast.
She’d moved.
Nothing more than a twitch of her trigger finger, and
the slightest crease of pain on her bloodied face, but she’d moved. Was she
recovering? Was this the chance he needed? Did he just need to buy her time?
He had to stall Mother. Now.
“Is this really worth it, Coven?” Ivan said, words
blurting from him. “Is it really worth letting children die just to get revenge
on me? Children who have nothing to do with this? My nieces were not even born when Gregor and I...”
His voice tailed off as she looked at him. There was
nothing in that expression except hate and a bloody thirst. He realised this
approach was not going to work. He may have made her pause, may have given Vast
a moment or two, but it would not be enough. He had to change tactics.
“For God’s sake, Coven,” he said through gritted
teeth whilst he held clenched fists to his chest. “Johnny is dead. Woodrow is
dead. Scarlett is dying. These are your daughters, for God’s sake. Why do children have to die? Is it really worth that? Am I?”
They stared at each other, and Ivan thought he saw a
shift in Coven’s gaze, as if she were looking somewhere far, far away. Was she
reliving the past? Was she reliving the night Ivan and Gregor had gunned down
her sisters, beating the self-proclaimed ‘Fastest women in the Pagentorns’ to the draw whilst Graven burnt down around
their ears?
The faintest arch of eyebrows, the
smallest flex of her jaw, and the smallest flare of nostrils as she looked down
her nose at Ivan. “It’s worth it,” she whispered. “It’s worth it because
I’ve waited more then twen’y years for this, an’ all
that time you’ve been hidin’ behin’
that purdy lil Oridian
navy, an’ in their palaces. Hidin’ from me, and hidin’ from yourself. But now I’m gonna to turn you back inta the goddam bast’rd you’re so afraid
of. I’m gonna make you go for that gun. Then, Ivan,
I’m gonna shoot you down.”
#
Something like the sound of a revving engine bubbled
in the creature's throat, and it swung at Stalin. The dog ducked under the arm
and scrambled off its chest, shouting, “Follow me! Quickly!”
As the creature rose to its feet amidst a grinding of
gears and the chunter of internal combustion, Tatiana staggered after Stalin. The
dog’s ceramic claws struggled for grip on the metal deck, but it managed to
scramble across the brig to the other door. Tatiana reached her sister and
grabbed her by the wrist before pulling her in her wake as she staggered after
the dog.
Stalin, on his hind legs, nudged at the door controls with his nose. The door began to open slowly and he slipped through without waiting.
Tatiana glanced over her shoulder as she neared the
door. The creature followed, loping after them with increasing speed.
Lacerations from the metal panel marred its wrist, and turgid oil spat from the
cuts.
Without checking their pace, the twins squeezed
through the narrow gap between door and frame. Once the girls were through,
Stalin nudged at the controls once more. Tatiana looked back. The door barely
slid shut before the creature reached it, and the metal buckled and groaned as
the angered monstrosity thundered into it.
Tatiana took a step back in reflex. Christ on a bike,
she thought, if ever I needed a weapon…
“I don’t believe it! That’s Trick Coven!” Stalin
began to run in a circle, tail between his legs. “If she’s here, the other
Covens must be too! We have to find the others and get out of here before we’re
all dead!”
“We don’t—” Katarina stopped and stared at the door
in fear as it buckled further, the sound of Trick hammering at the metal
echoing around them. “We don’t know where they are.”
Stalin’s nose twitched as he stopped circling and
sniffed the air, head raised. “I do. Or Ivan and Vast at least.” He ran down the corridor as he
shouted, “Let’s go!”
#
“Very well,” Ivan said in a low and tired voice. His
head sank and his shoulders slumped, limp arms by his side and scared hands
slack against his thighs. He squeezed his eyes shut and grimaced before he
turned away from Mother. “Kill her.”
“What did you say?” she asked.
He looked back over his shoulder. She stopped dead,
knife hovering over Vast’s chest. Her glare had shifted
into a study, as if trying to read Ivan. “Kill her,” he said. “You know me,
Coven. I am not sentimental man. One bodyguard is just like another. She is
nothing to me. So kill her. I can replace her, yes?”
He turned and began to walk away.
#
They ran from the brig as the corridor echoed with
the sound of Trick bludgeoning the door. Stalin raced ahead without looking
back, and Katarina would have been close behind were she not helping her
sister. She put her arms about Tatiana and helped her run behind the cyborg
dog.
“I don’t need…your help...Kat,” Tatiana wheezed
between gulps of painful breath.
“The fuck you don’t,” Katarina said with a crooked
smile.
Tatiana had to admit she had a point. Her lungs
burnt, and to breathe was a succession of painful battles. She held her ribs at
the point she’d been stabbed by Cook back on the Eater’s ship—back when Boyd
had still been alive.
Together they reached the end of the corridor, Stalin
running back and forth as he waited. He’d already opened the door, and the Troika’s Lukin
bay lay before them. The dog's tongue hung from his mouth and he looked past
them with eyes like saucers.
“Hurry up!” he shouted. “Trick’s about to—”
Behind them the brig door burst from its frame. It
skimmed across the deck before coming to a stop and rocking like an upturned
beetle. Trick erupted from the brig and sprinted after its quarry. As it ran
whatever infernal engine powered it popped and banged in earnest.
Tatiana and Kat staggered through the door into the Lukin bay to join Stalin. Once again their pursuer was cut
off in mid-stride as the door slammed shut. Once again the door began to buckle
and distort as Trick assaulted it.
“Christ. On a bike,” Tatiana gasped. “What is that thing?”
“That door’s not gonna hold
it any longer than the other,” Katarina said. “Do we have another plan?”
“You call this a plan?” Tatiana said with a withering
glare at Stalin. She leant against the bay wall and gulped air. “Sooner or
later we’re going to run out of luck—”
“And doors.”
“—We’ve got to stand and
fight.” Tatiana ignored Katarina’s interruption. “We can’t just keep running,”
“I can,” Stalin said. “My battery’s good for—”
“Nothing.” Katarina almost
spat the words. “Your battery’s good for nothing.”
“Stop it, you two,” Tatiana said. She forced herself
to breathe in through her nose and out of her mouth. Her breathing improved,
but it did nothing for her pain. She ignored it and looked about her as she
scoured the Lukin bay for some sort of weapon. “We
need to fight this Trick, not each other. We need weapons.”
“Why do we
need to fight him?” asked Stalin. “Where’s Boyd?”
“Yeah, where is
Boyd?” asked Katarina.
“He’s dead!” Tatiana couldn’t help it. The answer
just spilt from her as she stamped her foot and beat her fists against her
thighs. “He’s dead, okay? Now don’t
ask me again.”
She turned, tears in her eyes. She didn’t need this
right now. She had enough to deal with without having to think about Boyd as
well. She rubbed the tears away with the back of her hand, cheeks burning under
the slack-jawed stares of Katarina and Stalin.
Blinking through the tears, she focused on the Lukin bay as she tried to spot some kind of weapon. The
bay, however, held nothing but a row of open escape pod hatches on one wall,
and lockers filled with survival gear and vac-suits on the other.
Katarina said something that Tatiana barely heard
over the sound of Trick battering the door. She waved her hand in a dismissive
gesture and said “Not now, Kat. I need to thi—” She
stopped, and turned on her sister as her words percolated through her pain.
“Wait. What did you just say?”
Katarina looked own at her boots and shuffled a
little. “I said that I have some
weapons…”
#
The sound of Coven’s blade slicing into flesh made
Ivan wince.
“You can stop right there. You ain’t
goin’ nowhere.”
He stopped, and glanced at his gun as it brooded on
the deck. Two strides and he’d have it. Just two strides and he could end this.
His face contorted as he snarled. No! He would not!
He would not let her turn back the clock. He was never going to become that man
again. Never. Yevgeny had brought him close on Sauber’s Bazaar, and it had petrified him.
He walked on.
#
“What weapons?” Stalin asked.
Tatiana’s eyes narrowed. Was this what had destroyed that hag on the flight-deck? “Show me,” she
said. “Quickly”
Katarina reached under her shapeless stripy jumper.
Still she looked at the floor, and Tatiana could swear she was blushing.
Moments later Katarina—hands shaking—drew two objects from her belt, and showed
them to Tatiana and Stalin.
“Are you crazy?”
Stalin said, jaw almost on the deck. “That’s a macro-grenade! And a gun! If Ivan found out—”
“To hell with Ivan,” Tatiana said with a sneer. “It’s
Ivan’s fault we’re in this mess.” She stared at the gun. An old revolver and a
grenade she guessed Katarina had stolen from that crone on the flight-deck. It
was her turn to smile a crooked smile. Clever girl, Kat, she thought. Clever—
The door sprang from its mount with such force it
rammed into Katarina. The impact expelled the air from her lungs as it threw
her across the bay. The revolver and the grenade span through the air,
clattering across the deck to nestle beneath two kit lockers. Katarina landed
by an escape pod hatch.
“Katarina!” Tatiana shouted
as she watched her sister lay motionless on the deck.
“Tatiana! Look out!”
Stalin’s cry came too late. She turned to see Trick
looming over her, meat hook raised over its head, and fire burning in its eyes.
To be continued...
Discuss this
story—and more—on the Valentine Chronicles forum
© 2009 Mathew David
Spaull. All rights reserved.