Fire and Thunder

by Rachel Harrison

  ‘This is the fate that awaits every world from here to the sector’s edge, should we give in,’ Raine says. ‘This is Steadfast, and Drast. Every world we have fought to win back. It is Antar. The home that you fight to keep safe.’

  Raine sees them stir at the mention of their home world. At the word fate.

  ‘The only way to prevent this fate is to fight without cease. To deny our enemies, and their blasphemies. Every weapon arrayed against the Sighted counts. Every faithful heart.’

  Raine lowers her pistol.

  ‘If you truly think yourselves dead, then lie down beside all of these others and wait for the enemy to claim you. If you want to live, though. If you want to fight without cease and never give in, then stand with me, because I refuse to die here when there is so much left undone.’

  There is a brief moment of silence, during which Raine can hear the distant echo of the Sighted’s laughter once more, drawing closer.

  ‘Make your choice,’ Raine says. ‘Now.’

  And they do. The Antari salute her as one. Even Wyck.

  ‘We choose to fight, commissar,’ they say, in war-broken voices.

  The others are all spurred by the commissar’s words. Wyck can see it in their eyes. In the way they fight their way through the ossuary halls, and the burial shrines. Through the endless, twisting hallways. His kinfolk are all bright eyes and gritted teeth. Good order and discipline. They almost seem renewed. It’s always the same when Raine makes one of her speeches, because the commissar knows exactly which threads to pull. Wyck isn’t one for grand words, or speeches, but something Raine said sticks with him nonetheless.

  I refuse to die here.

  That’s why he is fighting. Not because of honour or glory. Not because of grand words. Wyck is fighting because he refuses to die here, too. He might be owed death a dozen times over, but he’s not ready for it. For the hounds to close their jaws around his throat and drag him to the After. For the judgement that waits in the black.

  For the counting of all of his sins.

  So Wyck fights hard and quick and fiercely, even without the stimms. He goes through his last two lasgun cells and then the ones he took from Ona, too, firing in short bursts, aiming for where the armour is weakest, or there’s no armour at all. Knees. Guts. Throats. The Kavrone rifle is useless in the narrow halls, so once Wyck’s lasgun is done, he resorts to his combat blade and his sidearm. Wyck has always favoured a blade. He can’t remember a time when he didn’t carry one. When he didn’t know how to use one. When Wyck was first tithed, they would all make jokes about it. That Wyck was made to be Wyldfolk, because he’d always rather cut to kill. His kinfolk would all sit around him and laugh, but he’d never join in.

  It isn’t his kinfolk laughing now, though. It’s the Sighted.

  Even pinned to the floor, with Wyck’s knee on his chest, the reaver still laughs. It’s a wet, clotted sound, because Wyck has already buried his knife in the reaver’s chest twice.

  ‘Fool,’ the Sighted spits, through his teeth. ‘Change is coming. Every. Death. Is. A–’

  The Sighted never gets to finish his words. Wyck cuts them short by cutting the reaver’s throat. Blood wells and spills and bubbles up with air escaping from the wound. It runs over Wyck’s hands. Soaks into his sleeves. A momentary quiet descends over him. A stillness, for less than a second.

  ‘Push forwards! Give them no quarter!’

  Raine’s voice cuts through that quiet. Wyck pulls his knife and gets back on his feet. Back to running right towards the enemy, because if he’s killing, then he’s not dying. If he’s killing, he’s not thinking on the commissar’s other words. The ones she spoke only to him, after her grand speech. Her outsider’s voice had been low, and emotionless. Cold as a winter’s dawn.

  Never again.

  Wyck didn’t have to ask what it meant. It was clear from the look in Raine’s depthless eyes. He’s on the blade’s edge, now.

  And Wyck knows that is another judgement he’s not ready for.

  It takes hours for Raine and the Antari to kill their way through the ossuaries, and the burial halls. Through the crypts and mausoleums. Hours of fighting under the hollow eyes of the faithful dead. Hours of running under fire. Of clashing swords and thundering guns.

  Hours of blood, and of killing.

  The Sighted come for them again and again, flocking from the darkness armed with wicked blades and rifles. Clad in mirrors and sigils. Vyne loses an eye to a Sighted reaver with an obsidian blade. He panics and shakes, and Lye has to use the last of her morpha to make him still enough for Efri to carry. Hale has his nose broken, and his scalp opened nearly to the bone. Koy loses one of her Mistvypers to a wire trap. It cuts Gile so deeply across his chest that he can’t even scream. Koy is the one to offer mercy. She does so with her own rifle, and a hollow look in her grey eyes. But the Antari don’t stop. They keep fighting without cease, just as Raine ordered them to. Cutting and killing their way towards The Saint’s Blessing, step by bloody step.

  They spend every shot in every powercell they carry, then resort to looting ammunition and guns from the dead. Wyck makes blade kill after blade kill until his green-and-grey uniform is soaked rust red. Crys builds shrapnel charges from loops of det-cord and handfuls of spent shells. Awd empties his flamer tanks and discards his kit so that they can use the remaining fumes as a makeshift explosive. With no bolt shells left, Raine has to rely on her sabre and her fists alone. She loses count of how many kills she makes, but it is enough that her arm goes numb to the shoulder from the constant clashing of swords. Raine is cut in return, across her arms and her legs. Across her face. She does not allow herself to slow, though, or to falter. She does not give in, or stop fighting, because what she said to the Antari is true.

  She refuses to die here.

  So Raine fights and she kills, and the Antari do the same around her, winning a little more ground with every kill, until the reavers stop coming and they finally emerge from the labyrinthine buildings into the open. The air is clear outside, not choked with smoke or dust or the smell of the dead. The sky is growing pale at the edges with the oncoming dawn. Ahead of them, the avenue slopes downwards steeply to terminate at another plateau that gives way to a steep cliff, and Whend’s enclosing ravine.

  ‘The Saint’s Blessing,’ Hale says, and he laughs, despite everything. Or perhaps because of everything. ‘You were right, commissar. It is still standing.’

  Raine can’t help but smile as she looks down the steep slope towards the aqueduct. Water glitters as it is pulled gently towards the city across the top of the white stone structure. The vast monument to Saint Selayna stands beside it with one hand extended, as though she is reaching out towards them. Calling them to the outlands. To safety. Raine can hear the water moving, even at this distance. It sounds strangely peaceful, as though the city is breathing in its sleep.

  ‘It looks as though nobody is down there,’ Crys says. ‘Maybe we should go now, quickly, before they show up again.’

  ‘There is definitely someone down there,’ Wyck says. ‘There’s no such thing as an easy win.’

  ‘Now, that’s a truth,’ Hale says, solemn again. ‘We go slow, two on two. Wounded in the centre. I know we all want out of here, but I’d rather not run into their teeth.’

  He looks at Wyck. ‘Unless you have a problem with that?’

  Raine sees Wyck glance at her momentarily before he shakes his head.

  ‘No, sir,’ he says.

  ‘Good,’ Hale says. ‘All right, Rifles. Let’s get ourselves out of this mess.’

  They move down the avenue slowly, sticking close to the fronts of the buildings. Wyck takes point like always, with Awd beside him. The twin suns are almost ready to rise, now. The sky is gilded at the seams, and the wind is already getting warmer. It does nothing to stop Wyck from shivering inside his skin. He can smell the water on the w
ind. It makes his throat ache and he realises over again how sunburned he is. How dehydrated. How bruised and bloody and exhausted. But he’s so close, now. So close to the aqueduct and the outlands. So close to keeping clear of the jaws of death, for one more day.

  But then Wyck catches sight of something down his sidearm’s sights. Another momentary glimmering, just like back in the ossuary halls. Just like with Ona. Only this time the glimmerings are located in the second- and third-level windows on the other side of the avenue.

  And this time, he is just about quick enough.

  ‘Longshots!’ Wyck shouts. ‘South side!’

  As he says the words, the Sighted snipers open fire. A series of loud cracks echo in the avenue. Mortar dust blows out in clouds from the building’s facade behind Wyck as he fires back at the closest of them with his sidearm.

  ‘Break and run!’ Hale shouts. ‘Go!’

  Wyck runs. The avenue is steep and uneven. Stone fragments cut the air all around him as the snipers chew up the cobblestones in an effort to cut the Antari down. Awd gets cut by it, badly. He staggers, but keeps running. Crys is fully carrying Zane, now. Another of Koy’s Mistvypers goes over heavy, dead in an instant. There’s a break in the sniper fire as they hit the bottom of the avenue, and for a split second Wyck thinks that maybe they’ve outrun them. Saint Selayna smiles down at him from above. The aqueduct is nothing but a short sprint away.

  But then Wyck hears laughter.

  The Sighted come spilling from the buildings on either side of the avenue like rats, cutting them off from the Saint’s Blessing. There are dozens of them. All mirrored masks and fate-marks and wide-mouth smiles and that constant, hateful laughter.

  ‘Stay together!’ Hale shouts. ‘Cut through! Don’t stop!’

  Wyck doesn’t stop. He fires his sidearm until it empties and locks in his hands, then breaks open the pistol’s casing by using it to break one of the reavers. Wyck drops what’s left. Uses his knife. His hands. There are so many of the Sighted. It’s a press. A howling, laughing, coiling press that smells of blood and sweat and death. One of the Sighted’s knives slides along Wyck’s ribs, right under his flak-plate. He opens the Sighted’s throat in return, but the pain is blinding. Numb and burning, all at once. Wyck’s vision tunnels. He staggers. Blood soaks into his fatigues in a wide, hot circle. In that moment, he catches sight of Raine. The commissar’s greatcoat is tattered and torn. The left side of her face is a bloody mask, and her sword’s blade is scorched black from use. The wounds should make her look more human, but they don’t. They make her look like something sent from the After.

  Like vengeance, given form.

  ‘Do not give in!’ Raine shouts over the chanting and the laughter. ‘You made a choice! Tell me again, what was it?’

  It’s not the words that do it. It’s her eyes. They are as cold as lake-depths, and just as unforgiving. Wyck has no choice but to answer alongside his kin.

  To fight.

  So Wyck fights. Bleeding and dizzy, he cuts and struggles and pushes and kills his way through the press, until he breaks through alongside his kin. Until the Sighted are behind them, and the shadow of Saint Selayna falls across him. Wyck keeps running. His Wyldfolk hit the aqueduct steps ahead of him. Awd and Efri. Dal and Vyne. Koy is there, too, with two of her own. Hale and Lye are carrying Kayd between them. Wyck reaches the steps alongside Crys. The combat engineer is cut and bleeding and gasping for breath, somehow still dragging Zane with her. Raine is the last to set foot on the aqueduct. Thirteen souls, from the twenty-three who left the Balfaran barracks. Wyck looks back, then, to see if the Sighted are still giving chase, because he can’t hear them any more over the racket of the water.

  Then he realises it’s not just the water.

  ‘No,’ he says, softly.

  Against the dawn-pink sky, Wyck can see the shape of an aircraft approaching at attack speed from over the city. It’s a Thunderbolt, just like before. Wyck hears Hale call ‘Incoming!’ He hears Crys swear vehemently as Zane struggles free of her grip. The witch sways on her feet, bleeding and shaking. She raises a hand towards the approaching Thunderbolt and makes a hateful, animal sound as she does her damnedest to pull the fighter to earth. Lightning arcs around her. Deep wounds open themselves along Zane’s arms. The Thunderbolt’s echoing engines struggle. Wyck’s pulse fires. For less than a second, he’s elated.

  But the Thunderbolt doesn’t fall. Zane does.

  The witch slumps forwards onto her knees, drooling and moaning. She can’t do it. Not this time. Wyck hears Hale shout for them to run for the outlands, to get across the aqueduct, but it’s too late. The fighter is already too close. They won’t outrun it. Their only hope is to kill it.

  Wyck unslings the Kavrone rifle from his shoulder and drops to one knee.

  ‘Dav!’ Lye shouts. ‘What in the hells are you doing?’

  ‘Shut up and run!’ he shouts back at her as he sights down the rifle.

  Wyck only has seconds before the Thunderbolt hits outside range and starts firing on them. It’s hardly long enough to settle the scope, never mind adjust for distance or wind or to do any of the things Keller told him all that time ago. He zeroes on the Thunderbolt. On the cockpit armourglass. The fighter wavers around inside the crosshairs. Wyck’s hands are shaking and slick on the stock. His vision is bleary and dazzled. The Thunderbolt’s engines are deafening, but he can’t fire. Not yet. He’s got to be sure. If he misses, they’re all dead. He’ll break his oath to Ona and get dragged to the After and have to stand sentence for all of his sins. For all of the blood on his hands. Wyck takes a breath and holds it.

  One.

  His lungs ache.

  Two.

  His eyes water.

  Three.

  The Thunderbolt falls into the heart of the sights.

  ‘God-Emperor, please,’ Wyck murmurs, and he pulls the trigger.

  The Kavrone rifle bellows and kicks like a bastard. A tiny instant of stillness descends over him, just like after a blade kill. He’s missed it. He’s sure of it. Wyck lowers the rifle, and he almost laughs, because Zane’s witch-words were right after all.

  He cannot escape from death.

  But then the Thunderbolt starts to slew in the air. The fighter rolls over and spins and then spirals downwards, engines screaming. It hits the plateau and the city side of the aqueduct and detonates. Wyck is knocked sprawling. Chunks of stone and metal hit the water and the walkway around him. Smoke rolls over, thick and black and choking. The aqueduct tremors and groans, but it doesn’t give. It doesn’t collapse. Saint Selayna remains standing, untouched by the fire or the destruction. Water rains down all around Wyck, displaced by the explosion. For a moment, it’s like being caught in a storm. It’s like home. Wyck does laugh, then. Or something like it. Something that hurts. As the smoke starts to blow clear, he sees the others stirring. His Wyldfolk. Koy, and her Mistvypers. Lye. Hale. Even Zane. The witch is still kneeling beside him, pale and bloody and more than half-dead. There’s a half-smile on her face that looks all too much like a rictus.

  ‘Looks as though your witch-words didn’t come true,’ Wyck says.

  Zane turns to look at him, fixing him with her silver eyes.

  ‘Oh, no,’ she says, in her rasping, sing-song voice. ‘They are true.’

  Something stirs in the smoke, then. A dark shape. Wyck draws his knife, but lowers it again when he sees the figure clearly. Raine is limping and bloodied, but her face is impassive, as if she is cut from stone. The twin suns finally break the horizon behind her, haloing the commissar in fire and gold.

  ‘On your feet.’ Raine’s voice is cold. ‘It is not over, yet.’

  Wyck does as she says, leaving the Kavrone rifle lying on the stone. He can’t take it with her dark eyes fixed on him like that. It’s like being watched by the Emperor twice over. Wyck realises then what Zane meant. Why the witch is st
ill smiling.

  You cannot escape. Death is watching you.

  Zane wasn’t talking about the Sighted, or the city.

  She was talking about Severina Raine.

  On their return to the forward command camp, Raine and those Antari who survived the Deadways undergo hours of debriefing and medicae assessment. Their weapons and armour are taken for refit and repair, as are those too badly wounded to be immediately cleared for service. Raine endures the process with deliberate patience. It takes so long that night is falling again by the time Raine reaches the Commissariat headquarters. It is a low building made of flakboard and iron struts. On the outside, the panels are painted black. On the inside, they are a bright, uncomfortable white. The lumens overhead are harsh. The room that Raine is summoned to is spare and small, with just enough room for two chairs. One is low to the ground, deliberately uncomfortable, and occupied by a fidgeting, discomforted figure in a grey cloth uniform. Raine elects not to take the other seat. Her legs are aching from the fight through the Deadways, but now is not the time for rest.

  ‘Do you know how many members of the Eleventh Antari Rifles were killed in the bombardment that collapsed the Bridge of Graces?’ she asks.

  Tacticae Officer Logun looks up at her. He is young and fair-haired, with one limpid blue eye and one silver augmetic. Other than that, Logun is unscarred.

  ‘Thirty-nine,’ he says. ‘Another fifteen were injured. Five of those will require augmentation before being cleared for service.’

  Raine nods. ‘Thirty-nine,’ she says. ‘Ten more died cutting through the Deadways to escape. The remaining thirteen are all injured. Some may yet die from their wounds.’

  Logun pales, and nods.

  ‘Extraction was not a viable option,’ he says. ‘The Sighted–’

  ‘Had air superiority,’ Raine interrupts. ‘I know. Your assessment was correct. I am not here to question a tactically sound decision.’

  Logun frowns.

  ‘You aren’t?’ he asks.

  ‘No,’ Raine says. ‘I am here to ask you to confirm an order script for me.’