Exiles in Arms: Night of the Necrotech

by Werner, C. L.

  Rutger tried to bring his mechanikal sword slashing down against the chain, to sever the link between the Reaper and its weapon. As he scrambled to his feet, however, the risen clutched at him with their clawed hands, pulling him back down. The morbid fingers of the undead tore at his body, blackened nails snapping against the heavy armor he wore. The mummified husk of a face leered down at him. Its pestilent stench made him gag. The undead brought its face still nearer, its rotten teeth clacking together in ghoulish anticipation.

  Before the risen could bite into him, it was suddenly flung through the air, impaled by the Reaper’s harpoon. Rutger kicked out at the other risen clawing at him, smashing skulls and snapping arms as he tried to scramble away. The steely groan of the chain echoed through the dungeon once more. Rutger just cleared the path of the thrashing risen spitted upon the harpoon as it was dragged across the ground. Several other undead weren’t so lucky, knocked flat as the chain pulled the creature through their crawling ranks.

  The helljack’s eyes erupted with a hateful fire when it saw the risen spitted on its harpoon. It ripped the undead free of its weapon with the pneumatic spike fitted to its other arm, splattering the corpse across the floor. A low, bestial growl rumbled through the thing as it marched toward its intended prey.

  The helljack took a few steps, then swung around with an enraged roar. The roar was met by the snarl of steam from Rex’s grill. The huge warjack came charging into the dungeon like an avalanche of iron, smoke billowing from its furnace, steam jetting from its pistons as lubricants vaporized in the intensity of the Toro’s furious rush. Risen were smashed into paste, their carcasses obliterated before Rex’s hurtling bulk. The witch, caught in the warjack’s path, started to evoke her magic. Crimson runes flickered around her, and her body started to assume a scarlet sheen. But before she could complete her spell, the claw of Rex’s foot struck her, tossing her through the air like a rag doll. The witch’s body slammed into the floor with an impact that bespoke broken bones and torn flesh.

  Rex’s momentum was broken, however, when its foot slipped into one of the torture pits scattered about the dungeon floor. The Toro’s thunderous drive ended in a shriek of twisting metal as it tripped and crashed to the floor, steam hissing through its cracked hull.

  Rutger shouted a warning to the ’jack, struggling to make his voice clear amid the din of battle. “Roll!” he told Rex, watching in alarm as the green glow of the warcaster’s magic flared about the helljack’s hull. The Reaper braced its clawed feet, thrust forward its left shoulder, and launched the harpoon at the fallen warjack.

  Rutger’s intention was for Rex to dodge the harpoon. But if the warjack heard his command, it couldn’t obey. The spear slammed into the Toro’s shoulder, ripping through the armor plate and stabbing into the gears beneath.

  Then the chain was retracting as the helljack tried to recover its weapon. Rex’s massive hand closed around the retreating chain. For an instant, the scene stood frozen, and then the helljack took a stumbling step toward the fallen Toro. Instead of dragging the harpoon back, the chain was pulling the Reaper toward Rex. Exhibiting an almost living sense of panic, the helljack resisted the second stumbling step toward Rex. It brought its piston-driven spike downward, driving it into the floor to prevent its forward momentum.

  The spiked arm groaned. For an instant, it seemed it must buckle under the strain being put upon it. Then the Reaper’s forward lurch straightened, and the chain began to reel itself back onto the spool.

  Rex, still clutching the chain with its hand, was dragged free from the pit. In trying to pull the Toro within reach of its spike, the Reaper instead pulled Rex back onto its feet.

  Rutger cut down one of the risen and shouted to Rex, ordering the warjack to tear the harpoon from its shoulder before the helljack could pull it any closer. Rex grabbed the length of black iron stabbed into its hull, rocking it back and forth to widen the wound. Once the hole was big enough, the pull of the chain ripped the harpoon free. The Reaper staggered at the unexpected slack, then yanked its spike from the floor. The rest of the chain drew itself back onto the spool, pulling the harpoon back into its launcher.

  Again, the grisly runes of the necrotech’s magic rippled around the Reaper, arcane flames licking about the length of its harpoon as the necrotech’s sorcery empowered his creation. The ghastly machine howled and took several steps back, even as its eyes blazed hatefully at Rex. With a metal scream, the harpoon exploded once more from the Reaper’s left arm and hurtled toward Rex.

  Kalder had discarded the two exhausted repeating pistols. A half dozen of the risen lay sprawled on the floor. As more of the undead came rushing at him, he drew the sword sheathed at his side and the third pistol holstered across his belly. Taking quick aim, he sent a bullet crashing through the rotten skull of one of the undead, splashing worms and brains across the creatures charging beside it. The undead didn’t falter, but continued their vicious advance.

  Kalder shifted the smoking pistol in his hand and fired at the first of the risen to close upon him. The creature’s jaw shattered. It lurched back from the impact. Before it could recover, the bounty hunter’s sword slashed across its belly, spilling its rotten entrails about its feet.

  The other undead came at him, their eyes filled with blood, fluid from the gory runes carved into their foreheads dripping down their faces. They attacked with an abominable vitality, pressing the bounty hunter back with clawed hands. When one of their clutching talons raked across his arm, the padded armor beneath Kalder’s coat was nearly shredded down to its quilt lining. Whatever magic the witch had endowed these corpses with, it had made their claws keen as razors. Kalder grimaced as he considered what damage they could inflict on unprotected flesh.

  The risen pressed him back. His slashing blade and barking pistol held no terror for the animated dead. They absorbed the injuries he inflicted without a single cry of pain. Unless he dealt a crippling blow, something that broke bones or severed tendons, the risen persisted.

  Kalder’s retreat brought his back against one of the pillars. Unable to withdraw any farther, he braced himself for the rush of his undead foes. The risen were hideous with the array of wounds they had suffered, their faces smashed by bullets, bony chests ripped open by his slashing sword. The bloody eyes glared at him with cold, alien loathing.

  The crack of pistols broke the final charge. Two of the creatures pitched and fell, the tops of their heads blown off. Two more turned toward their new assailant, but before they could move they too were vanquished. Kalder pounced upon the last, beating it down with the butt of his pistol and severing its head with his blade.

  The thrill of his miraculous escape turned sour when Kalder saw what had fired the shots that saved him. The pistol wraith stood watching, its tricorn hat pushed away from the hungry flames glowing in its eye sockets. The ghost wagged the barrel of its wraithlock at the bounty hunter, gesturing at the pistol in his hand.

  Kalder’s breath froze in his lungs as he understood what it was the phantom wanted. It must have appreciated his marksmanship or the tenacity with which he’d tried to fight off the risen. Somehow, Kalder had aroused the pistol wraith’s interest. Now the thing stood there waiting, just as it had for Taryn, anxious to test its abilities against another gunfighter.

  Kalder reloaded the spent gun, studying his undead adversary as he worked, taking in the antique character of its weapons and costume. An idea formed in his mind. The pistol wraith was an accomplished duelist that had doubtless gunned down many a rival both before and after its own death, but Kalder was gambling it hadn’t kept up with technology.

  When the ghost had waited to match its skills against Taryn’s in Vulger’s mansion, its form seemed to flicker between a phantom mistiness and stark physicality. When it was completely ghostlike, Kalder’s bullets had passed through it with no more effect than shooting at a puff of smoke. Only Taryn’s enchanted bullets had dealt it any harm. But when the pistol wraith was ready to attack, it assumed a
solidity that could be struck by mundane steel and lead. Only when it set itself to duel a mortal foe did the pistol wraith render itself vulnerable.

  Midway through reloading his weapon, Kalder stood up. The pistol wraith wagged its gun at him angrily, silently demanding that he finish loading it. The bounty hunter made a show of reaching to his belt for a cartridge, watching to see if the ghost appeared more solid, more tangible than it had been, preparing itself in case he made a play for his gun. In a blur of motion, he thrust his left arm toward the ghost. The spring holster hidden in Kalder’s sleeve sent a small holdout pistol leaping into his hand. The instant it slid across his palm, he tightened his finger around the trigger.

  The pistol wraith’s skull exploded as the bounty hunter’s bullet crashed through one of its eye sockets. The skeletal body buried beneath the creature’s archaic clothes crumbled in upon itself, collapsing where it stood. The wraithlocks clattered to the floor, their wooden stocks fragmenting, their metal barrels corroding now that the phantom’s essence no longer sustained them.

  Kalder smiled coldly at the vanquished ghost. “You’re a victim of your time,” he told the pile of grave dust and moldering rags. “These days, the only honor in a gunfight is being the one that walks away.”

  Through the haze of pain wracking his body, it dimly impressed itself upon Lorca’s brain that someone was attacking his Cryxian tormentors. The gangster would have laughed if Moritat had left more than a stub of tongue inside his mouth. The necrotech had been carving off bits and pieces of his onetime ally, fusing them into the morbid engine of his helljack. Tendons, muscles, even entire organs had been cut from his body, examined for their compatibility with the grisly machine. Many of the parts Moritat cut away hadn’t measured up to his inspection. These the necrotech had tossed aside like so much trash; they lay there now, strewn about Lorca.

  That any spark of life remained in Lorca was owed to the necrotech’s magic. When he’d watched Moritat vivisect his other victims, Lorca assumed it was some perverse sadism that motivated him to keep them alive. Now he understood that Moritat’s own amusement had nothing to do with it. The necrotech used his magic to extend the lives of his victims for the pragmatic purpose of ensuring he had fresh, vital materials.

  Lorca glared up as the spidery necrotech scurried near, watching as Moritat set his helljack against the intruders who had dared to attack him in his lair. The monster didn’t even deign to notice the tortured pile of meat writhing on the ground beside him. Drawing upon his sorcery, Moritat sent his mind leaping into the black-iron body of the Reaper, stirring its cortex.

  Lorca struggled to maintain some coherence, enough unity of thought to retain a toehold in the realm of sanity. He saw Rex charge at the Reaper, delighting in the warjack’s attack, remembering that this same ’jack had destroyed one of Moritat’s other Reapers. His excitement turned bitter when he saw Rex stumble in the torture pit. He sickened when he saw the Reaper’s harpoon impale the Toro and start to drag it across the floor. His spirits lifted again when Rex tore the harpoon from its body, leaving the immense spear to be dragged back to the helljack without him.

  Now the Reaper was angling for a fresh attack, some ghastly enchantment glowing about the helljack’s harpoon. He could see Rutger shouting commands to his ’jack, trying to maneuver it so that it could avoid or slip past the coming attack. Both machines were designed for close-in fighting, but the Reaper depended upon inflicting the first blow, using the combination of its harpoon and spike to cripple an enemy before they could strike back. Under the strict command of an experienced operator, such tactics would serve the helljack well. Manipulated by the mind of a warcaster, it could adapt its tactics to meet the changing situation. Just now, Moritat had the thing falling back before Rex’s approach, angling around so it could strike from the Toro’s flank. Rutger was trying to match Moritat’s maneuvers, but without the fluidity of control enjoyed by a warcaster, it was a hopeless effort.

  Lorca’s gaze focused on Moritat, watching the bloated necrotech as he made arcane gestures with his hands and uttered incantations with his decayed lips. Vengeance upon his tormentor was the only thought that kept the gangster from embracing the oblivion of madness. His arms and legs stripped raw by Azaam’s knives and Moritat’s tools, all he could do was flop and flail along the floor, undulating like some obscene worm. The spastic, frantic efforts inflicted their toll. Every foot he managed to crawl sent pain searing through the nerves Moritat had left inside him. His brain felt like an open wound by the time he’d crossed the few dozen feet between himself and the necrotech.

  By a supreme effort, Lorca managed to lunge at Moritat. He thought he could sink his teeth into one of the hoses in the necrotech’s gut, harm him by biting through the line. Instead, his teeth clamped shut around the base of one of the soul cages hanging from Moritat’s belt. The dead weight of the gangster’s falling body snapped the chain fastening the spectral energy casing to the belt. It crashed to the floor and rolled away across the dungeon, still aglow with the grisly luminance of the souls trapped inside.

  Moritat’s control over the Reaper was interrupted as the necrotech reacted to Lorca’s pathetic attack. Reaching down, he seized the mutilated gangster in his withered claws. Moritat pressed his talons into the man’s head and began to squeeze, clenching his hideous fingers until they punctured the bones of Lorca’s skull. The necrotech chuckled as blood and brain matter bubbled up from beneath his fingers.

  Indeed, Moritat thought it was such a pleasurable sensation that he considered reanimating Lorca once he had some spare time so he could repeat the experience.

  Almost absently, Moritat looked away from his victim to see what had become of the soul cage Lorca ripped free. A sharp gasp of alarm whistled through the necrotech’s decayed fangs. The glowing soul cage had rolled toward the helljack. Before he could reassert his control over the Reaper, the machine’s clawed foot came smashing down.

  There was a spectral explosion as the loose soul cage was crushed flat beneath the helljack’s foot. The unleashed spiritual energies became a phantom tempest, wailing and shrieking as they boiled up around the Reaper. Armor plates, ridges of bone, iron spikes, and copper pipes were torn free, sent scything across the dungeon in a storm of shrapnel and debris. The disembodied screams took on a more vicious and hateful quality as they were sucked through the helljack’s scarred hull, drawn into the raging fires of its ghoulish cortex. As each enraged wisp and orb was drawn into its cortex, the Reaper seemed to swell and pulsate with new power, its damaged frame bristling with fierce potentialities. On top of the enhanced necrotite fueling it and the eerie harmonics of the Orgoth dungeon, the infusion of so much arcane power sent the helljack completely wild. Smoke still rising from where the spirits had savaged its body, it threw back its spiked head and howled like a beast unleashed. Its piston-driven spike gouged into a pillar beside it. The monster shuffled from side to side, eyes blazing with an unholy bloodlust, a primal need to kill.

  As the creature closest to the berserk Reaper, Moritat became its first victim. The machine shifted around and sprang at the necrotech, transfixing him upon the end of the spike. Like some fattened tick, Moritat hung from his own creation’s arm, blood and oil streaming from his pierced body. The helljack shook its arm, finally dislodging Moritat and tossing him across the chamber. The necrotech’s body struck the floor and then rolled for a few dozen feet before plummeting into one of the torture pits.

  There was a sickening sound of crunching bone and ripped flesh as Moritat’s bulk was impaled on the stakes that lined the bottom.

  The moment the attack started, Taryn threw herself flat on the dungeon floor. The instincts she’d honed on the battlefields of Llael rose to the fore. When thrust into the middle of any fight, the first thing to do was get out of the way and take stock of the situation.

  She felt sick when she saw Rutger turning away from the wreckage of the iron lich, bracing himself to receive the attack of the hag and her risen. She
had thought her friend safely out of trouble; instead he’d thrust his head right into the hornet’s nest. What was more, he’d brought Kalder with him. Taryn didn’t know what lies or threats had made Rutger ally himself with the vicious bounty killer, but whatever the agreement between them, she was at its center, and whatever the terms of their alliance, Kalder would breach them as soon as he didn’t need Rutger anymore. Even if by some miracle the mercenary fended off the Cryxians, he’d only earn himself a knife in the back.

  Rolling across the floor, Taryn tried to find something, anything that might allow her to cut the leathery thongs binding her hands behind her back. A heap of splintered bone, debris from the necrotech’s morbid tinkering, offered the best prospect. She wriggled her body along the floor, pressed close against the wall, and used it to brace herself as she struggled onto her knees.

  It was then that Rex came charging into the dungeon. The Toro barreled through risen, swatting them aside like so many corpse flies. It kicked the witch, hurling her through the air. The hag crashed to the floor near Taryn, and suddenly the gun mage saw a much better prospect than a piece of splintered bone to saw through her bindings. She knew only too well how sharp the Satyxis kept the blades.

  Taryn tried to ignore the battle raging around her. Trussed as she was, she couldn’t help Rutger. She had to be free to do him any good. She crawled over to the witch. A broken rib protruded from her side, one arm wrenched beneath her. The knives were still thrust under the sash of her robe, and along with them Taryn’s confiscated magelocks. She smiled. She’d be able to help Rutger better than she’d imagined. But first she had to cut herself free.

  She watched the witch for a moment, studying her for any trace of life. Then Taryn turned her back to the hag and started feeling along the sash for a knife hilt. Just as her fingers touched one of the blades, she felt a merciless pull at her hair. Her head jerked back so that her body was forced to arch at an agonizing angle. The witch’s bruised face glowered at her, her eyes blazing with violence.