‘Aye,’ Hale says. ‘For the kill.’
Daven Wyck sinks down with his back against the barricades. Him and his Wyldfolk are right out in it, leaving the rest of Grey behind. So slow. Hard rounds clatter off the deck around him, throwing sparks into the air. Wyck puts his hand to his side. It comes away so red it’s almost black, and he realises he’s been shot. Realises that’s why it hurts and why he’s so dizzy. He can’t remember it happening. Can’t remember much of anything, save for splinters. Thrown punches. Hip-fire. Snapped bones. Strangling. Screams that could be his or could be theirs. That could just be echoes for all he knows because he can’t tell the edges from the centre anymore.
He rests his head against the barricades for a second and takes another vial out of the pouch at his belt. His vision is already pin-sharp. Everything is already so loud. But the gunshot wound will make him slow.
And he can’t afford to be slow.
Wyck uncaps the vial with his thumb and punches the auto-injector into his arm. It hits him hard, because he’s already running the edge. Already on the edge. It makes him knock his head against the barricades and grit his teeth. Makes him almost choke on his own spit.
Then it makes him get up on his feet. Take a breath. Wait for the chatter of guns to skip and then run from cover and into the teeth of it. Over the barricades and the sandbags they’ve slung up. There are five of the Sighted. Six. Maybe ten. It’s a blur of colours and shapes and sound. Yelling. The crack of las-fire. The thunderclaps of solid shot. Everything smells of iron and dirt and old flowers. More thrown punches that jolt his arm. Make his knuckles creak and ache. More bones that break under his hands and his boots.
More screams. Could be theirs, or his.
Then it’s over. Wyck doesn’t know exactly how he ends up on his knees, but he does. Throwing up onto the treadplate, so it goes into all of the grooves. There’s blood in that too. Blood everywhere.
So much of it, everywhere, always.
He gets to his feet again as the others catch up to him. Their faces run like water as the room turns. It should just be Crys and Haro and Jey, because that’s all he has left, but it’s not. Wyck sees Awd too, cut through. He sees Tian, all broken. Efri and Dal and Vyne. Yevi and Nial and all of the others that have gone on without him. Last of all there’s Keller, burned black save for his grey eyes.
What have you done, Dav? the dead ask.
‘Too much to forgive,’ he answers them, his voice barely a whisper.
And then Crys takes hold of him by the shoulders and shakes him and the dead vanish. Wyck shrugs her free before his nerves can fire enough to make him hit her.
‘You don’t look right,’ she says, her voice made low and slow. ‘Don’t sound right.’
He almost tells her it’s because he’s not. Because he’s wrong. Made badly. Broken and snapped, but he doesn’t. Instead he tells her what he always tells her, because soon it won’t matter anyway. Because of all his sins, lies are surely the least.
‘It’s nothing,’ Wyck says.
Raine feels the tide turning as she cuts and shoots and kills her way towards the command core alongside Yuri Hale and the rest of Grey Company. Raine’s hands are slick with blood and sweat, and her bones ache. Smoke stings her eyes and leaves her lungs raw, but they are so close.
Victory is so close.
And then the emitters overhead click live with a whine and Axhon-Pho’s voice echoes again, but this time it is more than just monotone.
It is enraged.
And a twinned bellow echoes in answer.
Raine looks to the source of the roar to see a hulking creature approaching through the smoke. No, not a creature. A creation, made from bone and flesh and metal to look like an apex predator. The thing is nearly as big as a Taurox, and it moves spasmodically on four limbs that end in clawed feet. Jagged crystal scales cover its body and forelimbs, and exhaust pipes jut from its shoulders. The creation’s face is no more than a silvered, asymmetric skull with slack, fanged jaws, that looks neither animal or human. Two more faceted crystals sit in the creation’s hollow eye sockets. It twitches and bellows again without moving those slack jaws, dribbling oil and fluid onto the deck.
‘Five hells,’ Jeth says, from beside Raine.
And the creation lowers its head and charges forwards.
‘Fall back to the barricades!’ Hale shouts. ‘Do not stop firing!’
Raine fires on it, the bolt shells detonating against the creature’s crystal hide, scattering shards and spraying the deck with oil. Las-fire from the Antari glances from the creation’s scales and clatter from its silvered bones. Hellgun fire chips splinters from its jaws and skull.
But the creation doesn’t stop.
It lands amidst the Antari, reeking of death and scattering oil. It guts Makar Kayd with a swipe of its claws. Knocks one of the Hartkin into the barricades and crushes another underfoot. Zane manages to save herself and Nuria Lye with a kine-shield but the psyker is on her knees and screaming. Tyl and Jeth stand their ground, still firing. Aiming for the eyes and the dead flesh between its scales. Raine hears Yuri Hale shout in Antari. The meaning of the words filters through to her as the creation turns towards him.
Go back to the hells.
Hale cuts the creation deeply across its forelimbs and face with his chainsword. The toothed blade skips and grinds over bone and metal, sending splinters and oil into the air. The creation falters and staggers and its limbs misfire and for a moment it seems it might fall and go still.
But then the creation rears and bellows and slices him with its massive, hooked claws.
Hale’s chainsword goes skittering away and he falls to his knees with blood spilling from the deep wounds in his face and throat and chest. Somehow, Hale still manages to raise his laspistol in a shaking hand and fire it up into the creature’s face, shattering its jaw.
‘Back to the hells,’ he manages to say again, over the vox.
And then the creation slams him onto the deck, and he goes still. Raine hears Lye scream. Hears Jeth curse. She yells too, wordlessly, firing her bolt pistol on the creation until it clicks empty. It comes for her then, bellowing all the while. Las-fire halos it. Tyl shatters one of the creation’s crystal eyes. Raine stands her ground with Evenfall in guard. She has to kill it. She has to survive. She cannot allow the shipyards to be the death sentence that Serek intended it to be.
She will not die here.
Raine allows the creation to get so close that she can smell the terrible death-stink rolling from beneath its ruined jaws. It swings a massive claw to cut her, snagging her along her hip and ribs as she ducks inside its reach. The pain is dizzying, but she is close enough now to see herself reflected in the faceted crystal of its remaining eye.
Close enough to plunge Evenfall to the hilt up into the creation’s skull.
The creation spasms and bellows and knocks Raine backwards, sending her crashing onto the deck. That is dizzying too. And painful. As Axhon-Pho’s creation thrashes and collapses to the deck, spilling oil and shedding sparks, Raine tries to sit herself up, but realises she can’t. Her armour is a ruin, torn open by the creation’s claws. She is bleeding a lot. It bubbles up and over her hands as she tries to stop it, turning her black uniform even more so. Raine’s vision smears and blurs as the Sighted start firing again and someone puts their armoured hands on her and drags her into cover behind the barricades. She sees a Duskhound’s mask through lidded eyes, and nearly says Andren Fel’s name.
‘Eyes on me, commissar,’ Cassia Tyl says. ‘You can’t die here.’
Raine shakes her head. She can’t die here. Not with the fight unfinished and with Serek still standing and the crusade fighting on blindly in the name of a lie.
She will not die here.
Raine tries to stan
d but she only makes it as far as her knees. Her sabre falls from her hand. Her pistol too. Tyl shouts for Lye as Raine manages to put her hand into her greatcoat pocket and take out the timepiece, printing blood into the name carved into the back of the case.
She hears her sister’s voice then, from the datacrystal recording.
You will not fail as I did, Severina.
You will be your own legend, and for that, I am so very proud.
Raine’s vision tunnels until the only point of light is the timepiece’s case, and her sister’s name.
‘Lucia,’ Raine whispers, as the darkness overcomes her.
‘Hale is down!’
Lara Koy’s voice over the vox is distorted by distance. Muted by the screaming and shouting and the hammering of Wyck’s heart in his ears. He takes cover behind the barricades with Sighted las-fire cutting holes in the smoke around him. He is breathing hard. Bleeding badly, from the wound in his side. So dosed up that colours are dazzling and his skin feels as though it’s afire.
‘Lara, I’m going to need you to repeat that,’ he says, his voice hoarse.
‘Yuri’s dead, Dav.’
Wyck blinks, and his hand falls away from the vox-bead in his ear. Yuri too. Gone to the After with Awd and Efri and Dal and Vyne and so many others. So many dead who don’t deserve it. Who aren’t owed it.
‘What about Devri and Blue?’ Wyck asks.
‘I cannot raise him without long-range vox. We’re on our own. The magos’ damned creatures are everywhere, and we’ve not long before we lose void support.’
Wyck chances a look around the barricade. There is only one more Sighted barricade between him and the bulkhead doors that lead to the command core. To the magos.
To the end.
‘We need a plan, Dav,’ Koy says, in his ear.
Wyck ducks back behind the cover as las-fire splits the air. He thinks about Karin Sun and Gold Company blown out into the void. Killed in an instant.
Wyck takes a deep breath, and it hurts to do it.
‘Leave it to me,’ he says, into the vox. ‘Just keep drawing their eyes.’
‘What are you going to do?’ she asks.
‘Enact Yuri’s last order,’ he says. ‘I’m going for the kill.’
He cuts the connection before she can argue with him.
‘What’s the plan, sarge?’ Crys says, from beside him.
The combat engineer is covered in ashes and dirt, and her flak armour is split across the chest-plate. A bloody wound carves its way along her scalp through her short, dark hair. Jey and Haro are still with her too, firing around the cover at the Sighted’s lines. The void-born don’t look like new blood anymore. They are just Wyldfolk, now.
‘We’re going to send the magos into the void,’ Wyck says. ‘How many charges do you have left?’
Crys pulls the last of her kit from her belt. A tight-wound bundle of demo charges, and a remote trigger.
‘Just the one, but there’s no real range on the trigger,’ she says. ‘I’ll have to be with it when it goes.’
What the Sighted on the gantries said comes back to Wyck then.
The darkness waits for you.
‘No, you won’t,’ Wyck says. ‘Give me the charges.’
Crys’ face falls in what seems like slow motion.
‘Sarge,’ she says.
‘No,’ Wyck snarls at her. ‘I won’t have your death to bear too. Not with all of the others. Now do as I say and give me the damned charges.’
Crys shakes her head. A tear paints a clean line through the blood on her face.
‘Damn it, Dav,’ she says.
But she passes him the charges. They are heavy and cold in Wyck’s hands.
‘You get me to the door, and then you fall back to the others,’ he says. ‘Clear?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Crys says.
She claps him on the shoulder then with her left hand. The one with the Wyldfolk’s mark on it.
‘Go fast,’ she says.
Wyck nods. ‘And don’t look back,’ he tells her, and he means it.
His Wyldfolk get into position beside him.
‘Ready?’ Crys asks.
Wyck feels the weight of the demo charges and the bolt shell he carries and the aquila around his neck and he nods.
‘Ready,’ he says.
And then he breaks cover and runs for the bulkhead door. Las-fire cuts the air around him. Punches holes in the deck. Nicks his legs as he runs. Wyck staggers but he doesn’t fall. Doesn’t slow. He hits the barricades and vaults them. Shoots one of the Sighted in the face and breaks another with the butt of his rifle. Crys knocks another to the deck. Jey guts one with a knife. Haro sends one spilling over backwards. The last two of the Sighted fall back towards the bulkhead. Wyck shoots one of them down and Crys gets the other, but they have already triggered the bulkhead door. A siren blares and the door begins to grind closed and Wyck runs for it, dropping into a slide under the door before it slams shut and seals with a hiss of pressure. Wyck gets to his feet with his ears ringing and his bones aching. He is alone in the vast command core, separated from his Wyldfolk. The circular chamber is lined with cogitator banks and lit only by the starlight coming through the armourglass viewports and the glowing crystals jutting from the deck like standing stones. Wyck takes a breath and gags. The command core stinks of death. Bared skulls and bits of bone lie everywhere. Torn sinews and slicks of blood. Some of it is animal, but most is not. Tangled loops of pipes and cables snake over and through the mess, sweating oil and coiling up to the raised central dais where they connect to the shadowed, jagged shape that sits on it.
The magos. Axhon-Pho.
There are even more bodies on the dais, scattered around the magos like kills in an ursa’s den. The loops of pipes and cables stir and slither over one another as the magos turns to face him, clicking like an auspex return. It rears up on nine mechanical legs. Black robes stitched with crimson spirals hang from what remains of its torso, thin and tattered. Multiple arms protrude from beneath those robes, bladed and augmented and set with weapons. The face inside the magos’ hood is a spiral of red crystals and lenses set around a central vox-emitter.
Wyck runs for the viewport as the magos claws its way down from the dais towards him. Jagged bolts of lightning spear from the magos’ weapon arms, arcing to the deck and the cogitators and scorching the air around Wyck’s head. One of the cogitators detonates, sending Wyck from his feet. He lands badly amongst the blood and the ruin, shattering his wrist. His rifle skitters away and is lost amongst the cables. The magos stalks closer on its spider limbs, with that auspex-click, hunting him. Wyck goes in the pouch at his belt and takes out another of his vials. The dose hits him even harder than the last one did. Blood runs from his nose and his heart aches in his chest as he gets back on his feet. More lightning hits the deck. He can smell the metal and blood stink of the magos as it lunges closer. Through the armourglass, the void looms wide and dark and strung with stars. It’s like looking at death itself. Right down the throat of the hounds. Wyck should be afraid, but he isn’t because of the weight of the bolt shell he carries. Because of the weight of the aquila around his neck. Because he is tired of the blood on his hands and the ghosts in his head.
He is tired of running from death.
Wyck drops into a slide as the magos tries to take his head clean off with one of those bladed arms. He slams Crys’ improvised charge against the armourglass where it sticks, and then rolls to his feet, ready to thumb the trigger.
And then one of the magos’ bladed arms punches into his chest, straight through the flak. Wyck coughs blood.
‘No good,’ he says.
Wyck’s feet leave the deck as the magos lifts him. The movement mak
es the blade shift in his chest and he cries out, going blind for a second. His body is going numb fast. He can’t make his fingers work. Can’t thumb the trigger. The magos tilts its head and blurts noise at him and Wyck sees himself reflected a dozen times in the shattered red crystals of its eyes. No rifle, no knife. Only the silver aquila on the chain around his neck left.
‘We’ll see about that,’ Wyck says.
Half-blind from pain and damn near dead, he thumbs the detonator trigger.
The world turns sideways as the magos is sent reeling by the explosion. Wyck ends up on his back on the treadplate as the viewport cracks along its length. Tectonic, like old ice underfoot. The magos screams again.
And the viewport blows out.
There’s a rush and a spin and the world turns again. The magos disappears into the void. Bits of glass rush past. Droplets of blood. Wyck’s ears ring, and it sounds like howling. He hangs in the emptiness waiting for the blackness to take him with agony running knives over his body inside and out. A memory presses in from the edges of his misfiring mind.
That day back home. He’d walked into the black lake to try to get the blood off his hands. To get rid of the knife he’d used. It wasn’t supposed to go that way. The fight was only meant to go to first blood. Just a way to get some extra coin for him and Raf and the others, but once he’d started fighting, he’d not been able to stop. Then Raf had to come and find him. He had to ask him that damned question.
What have you done, Dav?
It wasn’t supposed to go that way, but then Raf had pushed him. Punched him. Fought him. So, Wyck had fought back but the knife was still in his hand, and then it was buried in Raf’s chest.
It wasn’t supposed to go that way.
Awd said that it’s war that splinters a soul. Makes it snap. Wyck knows that’s not the truth of it. That some things are made badly in the first place. They start off broken. Weak. He waits for the void to take him. For the hounds to come and drag him to the After to be judged for all of his sins and the blood on his hands. He is ready for it. Ready to answer for everything.
Honourbound - Rachel Harrison Page 38