The smell she had noticed outside was strong here, overpowering the fire-smoke and the flat, waxy smell of the lanterns. Blood, and not the good kind. Someone had died here, badly. If Anton Trewpeny had friends in this building, he'd lost them for good.
She moved closer. Most of the unlit lanterns, she saw, were broken or missing. When she took her next step, her boot came down on a fragment of glass that splintered beneath her weight. She could just see, in the fluttering play of light and shadow, scattered pieces of iron and wood littering the floor ahead.
There was no clear way through to the corner and the stacks around her were out of place.
Red backed up a little, found a stable pile of timber, and scampered up it.
From this new vantage point she could see that everything in that corner of the warehouse, out to a distance of several metres, had been moved aside. No, she corrected herself, not just moved. Whatever had once occupied that part of the building had been flung away with massive force.
There was debris all over the floor: shattered barrels and twisted metal and lengths of lumber ripped from their piles and hurled away. Nothing remained in the corner except rubble. For a moment she thought that something might have exploded there, that the power of some massive blast had shunted the area clear. The debris hadn't been burned, though, and the wooden floor was unscorched. There was damage, in abundance, but the kind of damage that required some unimaginable physical strength, not an explosive charge.
Red climbed down her pile, and walked silently across the warehouse to the enclosed area.
It had looked intact from the door, but now she was approaching it from a different angle she could see that here, too, ruin had been done. The door had been torn away from its hinges, and lay broken against the wall. Most of the wooden partition had been shattered too.
Some of what lay inside the partition had been human, once.
Red turned away, sickened. The gore teasing her nostrils was an hour old, maybe more, and mixed irrevocably with the bowel-stench of the dead. Even though she was starving for the taste of blood, her stomach knotting and her head spinning with the lack of it, this was something that almost made her vomit. What she needed came fresh from the artery, warm and spouting, not like these sluggish pourings from ripped entrails and pulped skulls. Whatever had happened here had left nothing for her.
Being here suddenly felt even more dangerous. Red gave the warehouse one final scan and then headed back towards the door. Whoever came along next would find the shattered lock and the wreckage within, and perhaps they would be able to piece together what had happened. It was a mystery Red had neither the time nor the inclination to solve.
She was halfway back to the door when something heavy moved on the floor above her.
Red froze, craning her head back to stare into the rafters, as dust and tiny flakes of wood drifted down towards her. For a second or two the warehouse returned to silence, and Red almost managed to convince herself that a piece of lumber upstairs had simply been settling on its pile.
Before long, however, the noises sounded again. Something sliding, and what sounded very much like a slow, heavy series of footfalls.
These weren't the random impacts of some fallen pile of cargo. Somebody, or something, was on the floor above her.
Red changed direction and went over to the stairs, hauling her robes off as she did so. Beneath them she was wearing something far more figure-hugging; a catsuit of crimson leather and black neokevlar that would have given most of Igantia's pious citizens some kind of seizure just to see it. The costume was snug against her skin, and lithe, while providing protection in all the right places. It was not, however, very warm.
The gloves she was wearing came up to her elbows, but that still left her upper arms naked to the icy air.
Hopefully, it wouldn't be for long. Red stashed her robes at the foot of the stairs and then scampered up on all fours, only pausing when her head reached the level of the upper floor. She peered over the edge, but could see nothing except more piles of cargo.
She crept up another couple of steps, trying to ignore the cold, and peeked over the nearest pile.
There were two Endura warriors on the upper level.
One of them was a halberdier, just as she had seen in the square. His white cloak was spattered with blood, and he was using the blade of his weapon to poke a covered stack of cargo. The other was dressed in much the same way, but instead of a halberd he carried a short, heavy construction of bright metal, some kind of cylinder that ended in an open muzzle at one end and a fat hose at the other. The hose curled around him to a white-draped backpack.
When the man turned, Red could see that his helm was mounted with two big round lenses in place of the eye-slit, gleaming like black glass.
Neither of the Endura had seen her. Red stayed where she was, watching carefully, trying to work out what it was that the second man held. She'd not seen its like before, and it looked completely out of place in Igantia. It could have been a weapon, but to her it looked more like something used to put out fires.
Whatever it was, there was no reason to get into a fight and risk bringing more of the bastards in. It was Daedalus she needed now, not these goons. She put a foot back, feeling around for the step so that she could creep back down.
Below her, the door banged open, and Trewpeny shouted through it.
He had yelled someone's name , but Red didn't catch what it was. It didn't matter, anyway: the shout was loud enough to make the two Endura whirl around.
They must have both spotted her at the same time. The halberdier pointed his blade and shouted an order, and in response the man with the eye-lenses raised the tube he carried and pointed it at her.
This didn't look good at all.
She leapt up, diving out of the path of that gaping muzzle and launched herself at the two men.
The contraption must have been a weighty thing; the man didn't get it even halfway to bear before she backhanded him away. He tumbled backwards, eye-lenses shattered and trailing splinters of dark glass, and then the halberdier was on her, sweeping his blade around in a blurring arc that, if she hadn't jumped straight up over it, would have opened her belly.
They were fast, these armoured men. Even as Red was coming down from the jump, the Endura had already corrected his swing and was bringing the halberd up at her. The warehouse was cramped, dark and cluttered with stacked merchandise. He couldn't move it fast enough.
Red came down with one boot on the haft, splintering it.
The man stumbled back, flinging the broken weapon away and reaching for the scabbard on his belt.
Even if Red wanted to end the fight then, there was no way she could have done. Her body was moving almost without her intent, as though some powerful force had taken control of it and was buffeting her along like a leaf on the wind. Each move she made, each kick or blow or block came to her as if from a distance. She only noticed that she had done it after it was done.
For the few seconds it lasted, the feeling was terrifying. She had never been so out of control.
Images hit her like spikes: the sword, still in its scabbard, whirling away through the air; the man's armoured wrist twisting apart in her grip, the sound of ribs breaking under steel, of tearing flesh, of screams.
As she ripped his helmet away exposing his shock-white face, she heard curses and moans coming from somewhere other than the man she now pinned down between her legs, but that fact was swallowed whole in her bloodlust and forgotten. In the next instant her mouth was around his throat.
This was no gentle puncturing, like those she had subjected her companions to. Neither was it the rage-filled executions she had dealt to her enemies over the years. This was starvation, insanity. This was Durham Red, crazed by hunger, and made a beast.
The man's windpipe was in her way, so she bit through it and spat the mouthful aside. The blood that jetted into her mouth after that was a scalding nectar.
It went into her belly lik
e it was on fire, and immediately raced out from her core and into every part of her. As she drank, as the dying man jerked and kicked, Red's skin was alight from the inside. She could feel her bones glowing, her nerves stretching taught, every cell in her swelling and turning, round and fat and engorged beyond capacity.
The meal was done in seconds, but for a moment or two after that all Red could do was chew on the quivering meat. Then she heaved herself back, her mouth still full of dripping shreds, and let a hissing scream of raw animal joy tear its way out of her.
When she opened her eyes, she found herself staring straight into the muzzle of the first man's machine.
She snapped aside, moving faster than she thought she ever could, and the gout of energy from the machine tore past her like liquid lightning. The heat of it seared her bare shoulder, and its voltage set her heart stuttering. She tumbled away, surrounded by blasted wood and burning tarpaulin.
The noise of it was incredible, a deafening snarl of pure electrical fury, and its discharge lit up the warehouse.
Red jumped up from where she had landed, shaking her left arm hard. It was numb from shoulder to elbow, her hand stinging and contracting randomly. Her heart still felt like it was shivering in her chest, and she pressed a fist to her sternum. She coughed.
In answer, the lightning struck again.
It wasn't as close this time. Red bolted across the warehouse, the looping, sizzling beam snapping at her heels and sending up great splinters of smouldering wood. The man who held it was having trouble hauling it around, but he seemed quite prepared to sacrifice accuracy for firepower. He was keeping his finger on the trigger, trying to spray her with great howling splashes of electricity.
This was no weapon, Red realised, or at least it hadn't started out as one. The Endura, somehow, had gotten hold of a portable volt-hydrant, a machine normally used to recharge groundcars in a hurry. All the safeties had been disabled, or had simply rotted away, leaving an uncontrolled fountain of energy. It would probably run out of charge in a few seconds.
The warrior, robbed of his protective lenses, must have been almost blinded by the electrical arc. He was swinging the muzzle around like a fire hose.
Perhaps he hadn't used the thing before. Perhaps, after watching Red rip the throat out of his companion, he knew what would happen and just didn't care. In either case, the massive destruction he was causing to the warehouse could only have one effect. Although Red was somewhat surprised at how quickly that effect took place.
Just as she was reaching down to tug the plasma derringer from her boot, the floor started to give way.
There was little warning: a groan from the structure of the warehouse, loud enough to make both Red and the Endura soldier freeze and look up, a splintering crack from somewhere behind Red, a shout from the street, distant and somehow unreal.
Red saw a pile of sawn logs suddenly tip on end, and vanish. That was the last warning she had. Before she could even cry out the floor had come apart.
Half of it went upwards, not down; the power-arc had carved a great sweeping track through the boards and timbers, either burning through them or causing the sap and moisture still held within to detonate into steam. A curved section of floor suddenly ripped upwards in a hail of shards and smoke, cantilevered on some intact beam and driven apart by the weight of cargo on the other side. The effect was spectacular, but short-lived. No sooner had the tilt begun than it finished, the hinge-point shearing explosively.
The entire upper floor of the warehouse came down, sideways, and hammered into the floor below.
Red had been sent flying by the tilt. The derringer had flown from her grasp as a stack of barrels had cannoned into her in mid-air, and the next few seconds were a cacophonous whirlwind of debris. The floor went from under her and several tonnes of piled cargo at the same time, and she crashed helplessly down with it.
The fall would have been bad enough if it had only been to the next floor. Red was brutally smashed around by the debris all around her and shoved bruisingly down under an avalanche of wood. Of the Endura man there was no sign. He must have been pulped in an instant, armoured or not.
There was a second when Red found herself lying on her back, surrounded by broken crates and split barrels, her head full of the stink of burning wood, and looking up at the ceiling through the vast, smoking hole that had been the upper floor. There wasn't even time to shout for help before the whole process started all over again.
The lower floor, apparently not built from much more solid stuff than the upper, gave way under the repeated impacts, and fell apart in the middle.
Once again Red found herself being carried helplessly on a wave of broken cargo. This time the two halves of the floor both went up in opposite directions, split down a central seam and folding closed like the covers of a book as they descended. Had the warehouse been built higher above the river she might have been flattened unceremoniously between the two sections, but she hit the ice before that happened.
The contents of the warehouse then promptly slid down on top of her.
Even with her strength returning, and her quite remarkable mutant physique, that would have been the end of her if the majority of the cargo had been full. Many of the crates and barrels were empty however, awaiting new supplies when daysummer came and the river had melted enough to allow river travel. Igantia must have consumed a lot of local resources.
Red found herself crumpled up on the ice, the cold of it burning her skin, while layer after layer of wood settled and creaked above her. She was, luckily, able to move, because a lot of the debris had fallen in such a way as to support itself. That situation couldn't last for long. Too much of it was concentrated in small areas, and the ice was beginning to creak a warning.
Cursing roundly, Red began to scramble out from under the mass.
Up above her, she could hear Godolkin shouting. She tried to shout back, but something had hit her hard in the ribs on the way down, and all she could manage was a painful croak. She resolved to ignore the Iconoclast's shouts until she was in a better position.
The area under the ruined warehouse was getting quite foggy, she noticed. It was becoming difficult to see, and there was an odd noise, like meat frying in too much oil.
She hauled herself out from under the main pile and managed to scramble up onto her hands and knees. The scene around her was nightmarish; almost pitch-black, with ice below and the wooden slats of the dock above, and her view in every direction was blocked by an insane tangle of debris. It was bitterly cold, and more of the fog was starting to seep through gaps in the wreckage.
There was a light, bluish and fluttering, somewhere over to her left.
Red started towards it, moving debris out of the way when she could, squeezing nervously around it when she could not. Within a few moments she was able to drag a great sheet of warehouse floor out of the way and uncover the source of the light.
It was the volt-hydrant, the trigger jammed down, pouring out its energies into the night. It still hadn't run its charge dry. In fact, it was gouting power as violently as it had done when it was aimed at her.
The streams of lightning were hammering right into the frozen surface of the river.
Red stared at it, watching it sinking slowly through clouds of steam. "Oh, snecking hell," she muttered.
The ice couldn't have been all that thick. Half a metre, maybe less...
She turned, began to fight her way out through the last of the wreckage, and finally burst through into the open. There was a boat on its ramp next to her, partially flattened by falling debris, and she managed to grab a dangling chunk of mast and begin to pull herself up.
It was hard. The mast was slippery, the steam coming up and condensing on the wood, freezing smooth. She slid back, letting out a yell of pain as her bruised ribs jolted.
Godolkin was running along the dock towards her. "Blasphemy!"
"Get away!" She waved at him with a free hand. "Get everyone off the dock!"
/> "In time." He clambered down onto the boat, stretching a hand out to her.
"Time? There isn't any snecking time!"
"Then you had better stop shouting and let me help you."
Red snarled in frustration, moved back and then threw herself forwards. She felt his hand snap forwards and lock around her wrist. "What happened to always following my orders, eh?"
"I am following a prior order, to protect you."
She was on the deck. Godolkin, not realising that a partly charged fusion pack was swiftly melting its way through the river below him, was just standing there. Red opened her mouth to explain, but then snapped it closed again. There was no time.
"New order. We all get off this snecking dock, right now, and you don't even stop to ask why!"
They almost made it. Godolkin had to run back to the warehouse door and grab Trewpeny, literally stuffing the protesting lad under one arm to get him away. Red just bolted for the city gate, yelling at the top of her voice about fires, poisons, sea monsters: anything that would get the scattering of labourers still gawping at the warehouse collapse to follow her.
She was just crowding them through ahead of her when the hydrant melted its way through the last of the ice.
Had things occurred differently, and had Red been able to get hold of the hydrant intact, it might have been enough to begin Omega Fury's repair process. There must still have been a considerable amount of charge left in the backpack; enough, at least, to keep the fusion reaction in check.
The fusion torus itself would have been roughly the size of a walnut. The rest of the pack would be shielding, capacitors and densely-packed slabs of battery. All of which were swarming with power when the hydrant fell into the river. Any part of which could have been the first to fail.
Red had no idea which might have short-circuited first. She knew that once any part of the hydrant, which must have had much of its shielding corroded away after two centuries, made contact with water the end would be as close to instantaneous as made no odds.
She was right.
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