Exiles in Arms: Night of the Necrotech

by Werner, C. L.

  The intruder’s hand flicked beneath his coat, drawing a pistol. Without a second’s thought, he shot down the young gangster running toward him. A second guard, seeing his comrade’s fate, turned and ran screaming down the hallway, shouting for Volkenrath.

  The intruder had a second pistol in hand now, but he didn’t shoot the fleeing gangster. The idiot was running off to warn his boss and in doing so, he would lead the enemy straight to Volkenrath. Holstering his spent pistol, he hurried after the gangster. A richly appointed parlor lay ahead. Vulger Volkenrath and a score of his bruisers were there, the gang leader barking out orders to his men and trying to deploy them throughout the room.

  The hunter sneered. If Volkenrath had been his target, the man would be dead already. But it wasn’t the gangster Kalder wanted. It was the sneaky bitch who’d entered the man’s employ.

  The groan of an opening door brought Kalder spinning around. He grinned viciously as he saw Rutger Shaw standing in the doorway, his mechanikal sword in hand, the immense bulk of his warjack looming behind him. Where Rutger was, Kalder knew Taryn wouldn’t be far away. This time, the bounty hunter would do things in reverse. First kill Rutger, then secure his real target.

  Kalder was just aiming his pistol at Rutger when the whole mansion shook as though caught in the coils of the Wurm. The bounty hunter was sent sprawling, spilling across the floor and rolling behind a marble pillar. Instead of lessening, the tremor grew more violent and persistent. Then an entire section of the tile floor fractured, dropping away into a ragged hole that had formed beneath the hallway. But it wasn’t what dropped into the hole that arrested Kalder’s attention—it was the thing that came lumbering out.

  In shape, the horror vaguely resembled the bonejacks that had assaulted the Scrapyard. Hideous modifications had been made to it, the bony jaws distended to accommodate two whirling drill heads, the feet elongated into splayed claws that resembled nothing so much as scoop shovels. Gigantic black iron forelimbs tipped with wickedly serrated crescent blades drove themselves into the pit’s lip. The creature dragged itself up from the hole, the glow of Cryxlight rising from the soul furnace buried at its core.

  Even as the thing climbed from the pit, the tremor continued unabated. Screams rang throughout the mansion, alerting Kalder to the grim reality. The scene he was looking on, the burrowing bonejack erupting up from beneath Volkenrath’s estate, was being repeated throughout the mansion.

  Once again, the bounty hunter found a horde of undead monstrosities between himself and his prey.

  While Rutger led Rex out into the hall, Taryn dashed through the door to the parlor. By separating, they would be able to guard one another’s flanks, at the same time providing a chance to better react to whatever had alarmed Volkenrath’s gang. She found the portly gangster dressed in a purple robe, a massive hand cannon with a gilded stock clenched in his fat fingers. Vulger snapped orders to his men, spinning from one to another, trying to keep them close yet also dispersed around the room. His lieutenant, Lorca, was far more calm and collected, yet even his unflappable demeanor was shaken when the floor suddenly subsided into the ground, nearly sucking one of the gangsters down with it.

  A grisly atrocity of necrotic bone and black iron scrabbled up from the pit. There was a rough resemblance to the Deathripper Taryn had fought at the Scrapyard, but with changes that somehow lent it a beetle-like appearance. She’d heard of burrowing bonejacks deployed by Cryx, ghastly creations called Helldivers. This, she suspected, was a crude imitation, a digging monstrosity cobbled together from mining equipment and other bonejacks. As it scrabbled up from the pit, the flare of balefire cast a loathsome glow across the parlor.

  Taryn started to shout a warning to Vulger’s men, but the panicked gangsters were already blasting away at the Helldiver with everything they had. Pistols, hand cannons, even a scattergun and a pair of military rifles were trained on the bonejack. The machine’s black iron hull was shredded in the fusillade, splinters of shattered bone flying in every direction. The thing crumpled to the floor, twitching as its corrupt volition slowly drained.

  The gangsters were reloading their weapons when the real fighters clambered up from the pit. Taryn shuddered. There’d been no time to warn them.

  A wizened hag, her skin grey and wrinkled, her head disfigured by the horns that spiraled from her brow, leaped over the smoking remains of the Helldiver and slashed at the closest gangster with a set of curved knives. Circles of red runes flickered around the driving blades. The thugs shrieked as the knives raked across their chests. The blood arced back toward the witch’s knives, soaking her forearms.

  “Rutger! They’re after Vulger!” Taryn shouted, leveling one of her magelocks at the horned hag. Even as she started to pull the trigger, other creatures were rising from the pit. She saw a hideous, corpse-like thing come scrabbling up from the hole on a spider-like armature that served as its legs. A grisly sort of arcane power flowed around the creature. Taryn had seen a similar ring of runes only once, around a Khadoran warcaster on the battlefield. She shifted her aim, deciding that whatever this new horror was, it represented the greater danger.

  “Rutger!” she shouted again. “Need help here!” The necrotech appeared to notice her shout, turning its skull-like face to stare at her with a set of grotesquely preserved eyes. “Shadow,” Taryn hissed, invoking her own arcane power. A circle of runes flared about the barrel of her magelock as she pulled the trigger. The bullet took on a phantom-like appearance as it passed through one of Vulger’s men on its way toward the bloated monstrosity.

  The enchanted bullet just missed the necrotech’s forehead, where Taryn had aimed. Some profane energy deflected the shot, sending it blasting through the creature’s face instead. Teeth exploded from its shattered jaw as the shot exited its cheek, then slammed into the edge of the pit. The necrotech recoiled, then lurched forward again, one of its claws picking ribbons of torn flesh from the edges of its wound.

  “Rutger! Really need help here!” Taryn yelled. The ring of runes swirling about the necrotech flashed even brighter as something utterly enormous rose from the depths of the pit. Taryn’s heart faltered when she saw the thing pull itself up into the parlor. It was bigger than Rex, a colossus of black iron, corroded bone, and necromantic power. A faint wailing emanated from the vents of the furnace within its armored chest. It was shaped like a monstrous ape, short stocky legs supporting a massive torso with broad, hunched shoulders. A bronze-cast head thrust outward from those shoulders on a ball socket, giving it the semblance of a human skull. Two mammoth bone tusks jutted from the distended jaws, and fires smoldered deep within its eye sockets. The monster’s arms were also ape-like in their length, but the left arm was a piston-driven spike of bone fused to black iron. Energy coils snaked from it to the machine’s soul furnace. The right arm was an enormous harpoon gun, loops of chain wound about a spool of human skeletons. The arcane energies Taryn had sensed around the necrotech also swirled about the helljack, bathing it in a ghoulish light as it marched up into the mansion.

  An arctic chill rose up Taryn’s spine. That hideous, spider-like creature was some kind of warcaster! It was guiding the helljack not with commands, but with its thoughts.

  “Rutger!” Taryn screamed, drawing her second magelock as the helljack came stomping toward her.

  Before it could take more than a few steps, the machine was suddenly struck from the side, a dismembered black iron claw cracking against its head. It spun around with an alarming display of speed and agility, reacting far more like a living creature than a machine. The fires in its eye sockets blazed brighter as it focused its gaze upon its attacker.

  Rex stood in the hallway, smoke belching from its exhaust pipe, a growl venting through the grate in its helm. The crumpled wreckage of a second Helldiver was strewn about the ’jack’s feet. Embedded in one of its hands were the drill-fangs that had once filled the bonejack’s jaws. Reaching down, the warjack pulled up another piece of wreckage and flung it at the hell
jack. Aglow with the invigorating energies of the necrotech’s sorcery, the helljack ducked the flying debris.

  In that moment of weakness, Rex came charging forward. Its undamaged hand closed about the structure of the bony spike, pinning it to the helljack’s side.

  Finally, Taryn saw Rutger. He was running toward the struggling ’jacks, his mechanikal sword clenched in his fist. He turned and shouted, “Get Vulger to safety!” He shook Jackknife at the embattled helljack. “There’s nothing you can do against that thing!”

  Taryn knew he was right, but it didn’t make her feel any better. They were a team. Even if she couldn’t hurt the helljack itself, she might be able to stop the necrotech controlling it.

  A cry of terror she recognized as Vulger’s caused her to turn, in time to see the horned witch cut down the last man between her and Vulger. The man staggered away, trying to staunch the blood spurting from the stump of his hand. But the hag’s magic defied his effort, his blood seemingly sucked from his body by the eerie runes still dancing about the edge of his wound. The crone cackled as she turned toward Vulger. Clenching her teeth, Taryn aimed her magelock and fired.

  The hasty shot struck one of the hag’s horns and sent it spinning into the air. The witch wailed, clutching at her broken horn with one hand while making an arcane gesture with the other. As Taryn rushed in, the witch’s body seemed to evaporate, becoming a pillar of crimson mist. Taryn shivered but forced herself to lunge past the vapor. She seized Vulger by the shoulder and half led, half pushed him from the parlor.

  Almost paralyzed with fear, Vulger proved an obnoxious burden. Taryn was anxious to get him someplace at least relatively safe so she could get back and help Rutger. If it wasn’t already too late.

  “They’re here to get me! They’re here to get me!” was all Vulger could say.

  “If you don’t want them to get you, then pick up the pace,” Taryn snarled back.

  The harshness of her words touched something in the gangster’s brain, turning him vicious in his panic. He pulled free from her grip. “I pay you!” he snapped at her. “I pay you to protect me from those . . . those things!”

  “Then let me do my job,” Taryn said, trying to spur him down the hall.

  Again, Vulger shrugged free. “You don’t tell me what to do! I tell you what to do!”

  There was no humor in her laugh as she grabbed the gangster by the arm. “You can tell me anything you want once I get you somewhere safe.”

  “He already knows someplace safe.” The voice was Lorca’s. The gang lieutenant came running down the corridor toward them. He smiled apologetically to Taryn. “I was wrong about you two. You really know your business.” He nodded back down the hallway. “Your friend can use your help back there. I’ll take care of Vulger.”

  Taryn shook her head, not trusting Lorca’s conciliation. “It’s my job.”

  Lorca looked from her to his boss. “You don’t want anybody finding out about your escape tunnel, do you, Vulger?” He smiled as a guilty hostility rose to the gangster’s face. “A way out, but just for him. That’s how you got clear of the Scrapyard, isn’t it? Left by a back door even your own people didn’t know about. You didn’t stick around to see Taryn and Rutger save anybody. You were too busy saving yourself.”

  Vulger shook his fist at Lorca. “Watch your lip, you rig-running hustler!”

  Taryn looked at the two gangsters, disgust welling up in the bottom of her stomach. One look at Vulger told her that Lorca’s accusation was legitimate. She unholstered one of her magelocks and started to reload. “Get him to his spider-hole,” she told Lorca. “Like you said, I have to get back there and help my friend.”

  Rutger circled around the fighting ’jacks. He shouted at Rex, warning it to keep a tight hold on the helljack’s spike. He’d heard descriptions of these infernal machines, monsters that had earned the name “Reapers.” The spike was piston-driven, made of magically strengthened bone and corrupted metal. It could gouge almost the thickest armor plate, stabbing into the hull to puncture engines and rupture boilers. The favorite tactic of these diabolic monstrosities was to secure a victim with its harpoon, then reel in the enemy ’jack and reduce it to scrap with its spike.

  The necrotech’s body was ringed with arcane runes. The creature pointed its claw at the Reaper, and the helljack’s spike began to blaze with sorcerous energies. The magic began to corrode Rex’s fingers. Trails of metal crumbled from the warjack’s hand as the eldritch emanations rotted its grip.

  Staying close to the Reaper and keeping its spike locked at its side rendered its best weapons useless, but the necrotech’s venomous magic was quickly breaking the warjack’s hold. Then there was the problem of the necrotech. Rutger knew the hallmarks of a warcaster when he encountered one. The uncanny lifelike reactions, eerie quickness, and dexterity of the ’jack indicated a level of control far beyond the skills of even an accomplished operator.

  While he shouted to Rex, the Reaper raked its tusks across the warjack’s hull. The necrotech was trying to get one of those tusks lodged under Rex’s neck. From there, a twist of the helljack’s torso would send Rex’s head from its shoulders. Given the helljack’s damnable quickness, it was only a matter of time before the fiendish machine succeeded.

  Rutger circled the feuding machines. He tried to bring Jackknife slashing down across the helljack’s leg, but even as he struck out he was assaulted from behind. A powerful blow gouged across his back, shredding his coat. If not for the armor he wore underneath, he would have been slashed clean to the bone.

  The mercenary spun and brought Jackknife flashing outward. He caught the downward swing of a sword, sending both it and the rotten arm holding it bouncing across the floor. His undead attacker didn’t seem aware of its mutilation, continuing to thrust at him with its stump.

  Beyond the attacker he’d mangled, Rutger could see more risen climbing up from the pit. They moved in concert to the crazed shrieks and gestures of a wizened witch slathered in blood. Stroking the broken nub of her horn, she pointed a bony claw at Rutger and sent the walking dead after him.

  “Azaam!” the slobbering voice of the necrotech called down. The creature had climbed to the top of the spiral stairs to secure a better vantage. Perched on the walkway above, the monster looked even more spider-like. Its eyes were fixed on the witch rather than the mercenary. “It will go ill for you if you interfere with my experiment.”

  The reprimand was accompanied by a wheezing laugh, but the witch paled as though it were a threat uttered by the Dragonfather himself. She made a slashing gesture with her bloody hands and the walking corpses withdrew, stalking away from Rutger as though he burned with the light of Morrow.

  “Now,” the necrotech called down to Rutger, “we will see if mortal desperation can match immortal design and construction.”

  Rutger forced himself to hold the monster’s gaze. “Yes, we will.” He drew his hand cannon. The necrotech smiled down with its ruined face, seemingly amused that this young human would be so bold as to shoot at it.

  Its amusement turned to an angry howl when Rutger spun around and discharged his weapon at the helljack. He didn’t aim for the hull, exhaust pipe, head, or any of the other places where the Reaper was protected by thick armor. Instead, he fired on the skeletal spool fitted to the harpoon gun. From point-blank range, the impact shattered the fused bone. Loops of heavy chain spilled from the broken spool, piling in a heap on the floor.

  “Run!” Rutger shouted to Rex.

  As he turned to follow his own advice, Rutger noted the corpse of a gangster lying nearby. Across the dead man’s waist hung a belt of iron spheres. Rutger dropped down by the body, stripping the grenades.

  Pivoting its torso, Rex smashed its shoulder into the Reaper, jarring it just enough for the warjack to disengage. As Rex retreated, the Reaper struck with its spike, tearing a deep fissure in the plating along Rex’s side. Then it pursued. Rutger slung grenades as the necrotech started to follow its helljack. They fell shor
t, bouncing down the spiral steps before exploding. The bottom of the stairway was wrenched from its moorings, sending the entire structure crashing to the floor. The necrotech staggered back, its body cut by the flying debris. Stranded atop the landing, the creature growled and stamped each of its spidery legs in a fit of frustration.

  Rutger ran ahead of Rex, urging the warjack to greater speed. He knew it could only be a matter of moments before the faster, nimbler helljack was back on its feet and in pursuit. He wanted the monster to pursue, wanted to get it as far from the parlor as he could. He’d disabled its harpoon gun to ensure it would have to follow Rex and fight at close range.

  A desperate plan had occurred to Rutger, one that would depend on keeping out of the helljack’s reach, yet close enough to pounce on the Reaper when the time came. It would also depend on the necrotech warcaster staying right where he was.

  Rex’s pounding legs shook the music room, knocking bits of plaster from wall and ceiling. The tremors redoubled when the Reaper came charging in. The helljack dodged around columns, exhibiting again the lifelike semblance only a warcaster could endow.

  Rex was almost in the far corner of the room, its back to the wall. The charging helljack whirled toward Rex, but instead of rushing around the columns and using them for cover, the machine came barreling straight on. The warcaster’s guiding influence was gone. Rutger had lured the Reaper beyond the necrotech’s range of control. Only the helljack’s innate consciousness was left.

  “Scrap him,” Rutger commanded, pointing Jackknife at the paralyzed Reaper. A bestial growl vented from Rex’s grill as the warjack turned and rushed its enemy. Rex slammed its crippled hand against the helljack’s chest, using the drill bits embedded in its palm to rip the hull. Rex’s other hand closed about the helljack’s arm. Without the Reaper’s active resistance, Rex was able to bend the spike back upon itself, driving the tip into the piston.