by Choi, Bryan
The man’s attendants and guards wasted no time in hauling the corpulent priest up by his arms. Sweating, they dragged him from the center of the orgy pit to the vault door. Metal creaked as the door started to swing open.
Karma was the first to stumble through the velvet curtain. Mikhail’s arm was draped over his shoulders, for the albino had been struck in the leg and hopped along painfully. Karma’s shirt was also stained with blood.
“Report!” Lotte commanded.
“Chevs!” Karma said. “Assholes poured in and started shooting and hacking at everyone! The albino’s hit bad.”
“I can still fight,” Mikhail said.
Enilna was next through. Her face was speckled with blood and her dress torn, but she had a rifle slung over her shoulder. She raced over to Taki and cupped his face in her hands.
“You okay?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “Sorry, you can’t have my gun.”
“I wasn’t asking for it!”
Another staccato press of fire from above, and the last two finally pushed through. Elsa’s finery was in tatters, and she bore a cut across her side. Hadassah stuck the barrel of a musket through the curtain and fired a shot before retreating to where her companions huddled.
“There’s a ton of them,” Hadassah said. “All shouting ‘Pour Sophie!’ and stuff.”
“All of you get guns and ammo from the vault before they lock us out,” Lotte ordered. “And save a few rounds for yourselves if the princess gets her hands on you!”
Taki raced through the vault and skidded to a halt, amazed at what he saw. Countless glinting brass cartridges overflowed from bulging boxes on shelves like lethal cornucopias. Ancient guns—Temple guns—lay haphazardly against each other like so much piled-up firewood, and an entire row of shelving was devoted solely to cannon shells.
The primate’s footmen had already taken the heaviest and best guns of the hoard for themselves and seemed in no mood to share. Taki, however, had neither desire to carry the heavy deathbringers nor knowledge of how to use them. A Herstal pistol on the ground nearby caught his attention. He picked it up and raced back outside.
The velvet curtain at the base of the stairs caught fire. Taki raised his pistol and focused on steadying his aim. Any moment, dozens of soldiers could come pouring into the rotunda. Something Draco had once muttered came back to him unbidden: Once more unto the breach, dear friends. The smoldering cloth finally fell apart, and in stepped a pair of Templars.
While his compatriots had faced these foes before, Taki had not, and his first impulse was to gawk. Each fighter was a behemoth, standing easily two meters tall. Deeply pitted metal armor covered almost every surface save for the joints, which were encased thickly in chainmail and aramid. Their helmets were fearsome, horned things with a demonic visage formed on the faceplate with only a single, tiny eyeslit. Each carried what looked like the end of a hose apparatus, fed by a massive pair of canisters hefted on their backs.
The naked, huddled courtesans tried to make a break for it. Shouting their loyalty to the crown, they ran toward the Templars. Without a word, both monoliths raised their hoses and spewed fire at the crowd.
Taki’s jaw dropped as bodies toppled and the stench of burnt hair hit him full in the face. His legs buckled, and he vomited all over his own feet. Heat washed over him like a smothering current, and his throat closed against it. This isn’t real. That didn’t just happen. Thou shalt not be affrighted by them, for the Lord thy God is among you, a mighty God and terrible…
Lotte grabbed Taki by the back of his coat and pulled him behind a pillar. “Natalis, compose yourself!” She let out a burst from her rifle, and one of the giants stumbled back but quickly righted itself. The creatures shed their strange fire weapons and drew greatswords.
“Everyone watch your ammunition!” Aslatiel shouted from the next pillar over. “Shoot their vulnerable parts. Joints and heads!”
Taki struggled to raise himself and wiped foulness away from his lips. He fired with his pistol, and the round splattered against a horned helm. Despite the superior marksmanship on his side, the hail of bullets didn’t appear to be seriously harming the Templars, though they seemed reluctant to advance.
“Natalis, flank and cast a sutra,” Lotte ordered. “We’ll close in and finish them off.”
Taki nodded and slunk out of cover. Though nauseated, he managed to slip behind a crumbling dais to the right of the Templar duo without pausing to vomit. In his peripheral vision, he caught sight of a pair of charred bodies. The corpses were stuck in an embrace, one of them trying to protect the other’s head. Taki clenched his fists. He remembered how impotent he had felt back in the Kosovar lands. Not anymore. Now, he was free to act. Vengeance is mine. I am he who will repay.
He let his gates open, and his power bounded and frothed. He murmured a strengthening mantra and then stepped out from cover and extended both arms. The Templars turned to bear on him, and he released his anger. Twin streams of blazing air lanced out from his palms. One punched through a Templar’s groin and severed his legs. The other Templar caught a blast full in the face. It dissolved the metal visor and punched out the back of his helmet. The behemoth fell back, smoking dead.
Almost instantly, his companions were on the wounded Templar. Lotte stomped on the hulk’s wrist and wrenched the greatsword away. Hadassah jammed the muzzle of her rifle against the eyeslit and pulled the trigger again and again until dark paste splattered on the floor. Taki fell to one knee, breathing heavily. Save for the sound of licking flames, all was silent.
“Natalis, you’re burned,” Lotte said as she grasped one of Taki’s arms. He gasped. Blisters had sprung up on the sensitive undersides, and some were already leaking. She let go. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to cause you pain.”
“All’s well, Captain,” Taki said. “I just got a bit too angry when I cast the sutra. It’ll be a lesson.” He wiped his eyes with the dirty hem of his page’s shirt.
Lotte gently helped him to his feet. She leaned in closer, and her breath tickled his ear. “I’ll help you wash up later.”
“Captain,” he groaned, trying not to flush even harder.
“Did I say something wrong?”
“I’m just glad we’re all going to make it,” he said with a smile.
“We got company!” Hadassah shouted from afar. She trained her rifle on a new arrival.
“Infidels. Defilers.” Princess Sophie Troiscent slowly descended the stairway and stood at the threshold. “Cast your arms aside and beg forgiveness.”
Hadassah spat. “I ain’t doin’ shit for someone in a chainmail bikini! Put your fucking hands up and…and stop objectifying yourself! It’s gross!”
“If you will not accept purity, then you must be purged,” Sophie said, and knelt. Before anyone could comprehend her actions, her body started to change. Her arms stretched and dislocated, and her torso arched back in extreme lordosis. Silvery rivulets coursed over her skin to cover her exposed flesh. A pair of spiny legs erupted from right below the junction of her chest and abdomen and punched spiked ends into the marble. Where her hands had been were now scythes of chitin. Her jaw split down the middle to become a pair of mandibles, and her screams and moans took on a newly guttural, alien-sounding quality.
“Did she j-just turn into a gigantic f-fucking bee?” Karma asked. He raised his carbine and fired. “I hate bees!”
Sophie sidestepped his shots and leapt through the air to latch on to one of the pillars. The end of her reticulated abdomen swept in an arc. Karma bent back just in time to avoid having his face taken off by a meter-long metal spike. He tumbled to the floor, and the stinger whipped around and plunged right at his chest.
With a vicious clang of metal, it ground against the edge of a greatsword before it could impale him and then punched a hole in the stone floor. Lotte whirled around to slice Sophie’s guts open and put a deep rent in the armor plate. The princess let out a warbling shriek and skittered away to hang from the ceili
ng.
Something protruded from where Sophie’s pelvis had once been. It gave off a metallic whine but then issued forth a molten stream that carved a smoking trench up the center of the room. Another long burst sawed into one of the pillars and caused it to buckle and collapse. The pillar’s inside was filled with tightly compacted limestone powder, and the impact sent a great plume of choking dust into the air to fill the rotunda.
“Back to the vault! She can’t fit through!” Aslatiel shouted.
Sophie dropped to the floor and lashed her spiked tail at whoever she could.
“What the godrotting hell is that?” Taki sputtered.
“An Ursalan princess,” Elsa said. She had propped herself up next to him and busied herself trying to stanch the bleeding from Mikhail’s wound.
“That’s a princess?”
“Aye. Ursala makes ’em strange and deadly.”
Christ, there’s bone sticking out of Zhukov’s leg, Taki thought. He’ll lose the limb for sure…if we don’t die here.
“Elsa, the monster must be killed,” Mikhail said. He charged his rifle on a fresh magazine.
Elsa squeezed his arm. “I know. We’re working on it.”
“I have a plan,” he said. Before Elsa could react, he reached out, cradled her face in his palms, and pressed his lips to hers. After a few seconds, he broke off the kiss and rose to his feet with rifle in hand.
“What’re you doing?” Elsa cried as he limped out of the vault. She started after him.
“Stop her!” Aslatiel shouted.
Taki gritted his teeth and tackled Elsa in a bear hug. She struggled against him, making his joints burn.
Mikhail fired blindly and wildly into the dust. Sophie dropped from the ceiling and plunged her stinger through him. He groaned, dropped the rifle, and tightly grasped the metal spike.
Sophie thrashed from side to side, trying to shake Mikhail off, but he held firm. Finally, she drew her belly in to bring him closer. He was ashen from blood loss but still would not let go. She seemed to stare at him for a moment, and then she brought her mandibles to his neck.
Mikhail’s eyelids fluttered open, and his free arm whipped out to shove something between her pincers and down her throat. Sophie clamped her jaws and chopped his arm away neatly at the elbow. Blood splattered her face, and Mikhail’s eyes rolled back in shock. He let go of the spike, and his body slid off the stinger to drop to the floor with a dull thud.
Elsa screamed and thrashed against Taki’s arms, but he held firm. She sank her teeth into his arm, and the pain made his eyes water. She bashed her head against his nose, and Taki heard a crunch as it moved out of place, but he still held firm.
“Let me go! Let me go!” she screamed. They both went rolling on the floor, right in front of the vault opening.
Sophie clacked her mandibles together and went prostrate on the ground in front of them. Her back arched, and the contraption on her abdomen whined as its barrels started to spin. She swung it to aim into the vault.
Shit, Taki thought—they were right in the line of fire.
Before Sophie could rake them with lead, white-hot metal erupted from her chest and spewed all over the floor. Her limbs thrashed violently, and she curled into a ball. A few seconds later, she went limp.
Taki grimaced and let Elsa loose. She kicked away from him and rushed past the princess’s grotesque corpse and over to where Mikhail lay. Something made Taki pick himself up and bound over to where she was.
She cradled the albino’s head in her lap, rocking back and forth. His color would have made it hard to tell whether his blood was still in his body, had it not been for the large crimson pool around him.
To Taki’s surprise, Mikhail’s lips were moving.
“Don’t,” Elsa said to her stricken comrade. “I hate good-byes. See you next life.”
Mikhail smiled and was still.
Taki knelt. He heard Lotte bellowing commands but couldn’t understand her. He wiped the blood away from his face. He’d triumphed. An Ursalan princess lay dead before his feet, and the Imperium was that much closer to victory. Mikhail had been a valuable companion during the raid in Lhasa, but he hadn’t known the man very well. There were a thousand reasons to be happy, but for some reason he felt only hollowness and bile.
12
The clouds hung low in the sky, pregnant with rain, but failed to deliver while Astarte smoldered. The streets continued to overflow with human waste while rats tore each others’ guts out, but now a newer contaminant flowed into the trenches: human blood.
Taki shook his head as he peered out from the window of his room at the inn. Since the battle with Princess Sophie, the streets had become an impassable morass of checkpoints, barricades, and clashes between armed men bearing a multitude of standards that Taki had never seen before but could only assume were some flavor of Ursalan. Thus, for the time being, everyone was stuck indoors at the rooms they’d rented before visiting the Tintoretto. The inn was a large establishment that could hire its own private guards, which suited everyone just fine. Below Taki’s window, a lone, cloaked figure furtively made his way down the avenue, only to be set on by two others. The two dragged their mark into the darkness of an alley, and he heard squelching sounds.
A knock sounded at his door; Taki tensed and reached for his Herstal. “Yes?”
“It’s me,” Lotte said. She pushed the door open without waiting for him to invite her in.
“Captain,” Taki said. He rose to salute, but she dismissed the gesture with a headshake and went over to sit in the casement next to him.
“Believe it or not, this is a peaceful coup for Astarte,” Lotte said. “Many of the Rex’s die hards perished in the Tintoretto. Now, the primate’s followers will take care of the others. And loot and rape and murder for fun on the side.”
“I thought we were here to be discreet,” Taki said. “I didn’t know we’d set off a bloodbath.”
“The Ursalans can kill each other off to the very last man, as far as I’m concerned,” Lotte said. “Better their lives spent than ours.”
“Guess you’re right,” Taki said. He looked at his hands.
“These aren’t poor peasants,” Lotte said gently. She squeezed his shoulder. “Everyone in this place has a gun behind his or her back and plenty of sins to defend with it.”
“I’ve gotten over that,” Taki said.
“Feeling morose over the albino?”
“Perhaps. Zhukov was a good man. I’d never known a Moslem before I met him.”
Lotte smiled. “If it’s any comfort, they believe that when one of the faithful dies in battle, he’s greeted by seventy-two virgins in paradise.”
“That sounds apocryphal,” Taki said with a sour expression.
“You’re just jealous. How are your wounds?”
Taki drew his sleeves up and showed her. The blisters had all ruptured and sloughed off, leaving grainy scabs. The swelling and redness from the burns, however, had disappeared.
“You never took me up on my offer,” she said.
“You were just teasing me, Captain,” Taki said.
“You shouldn’t always assume the worst, Natalis. You’ll be a virgin for the rest of your life that way.”
“And now you are teasing me.”
“Is that new confidence I hear from my awkward little cornet? Did you, perchance, tumble with the Kosovar girl who likes you?”
Taki turned red around his ears. “She’s immature. I don’t really fancy her in that way.”
Lotte laughed. “It seems I hit a nerve. Not to worry, I won’t tease you more.”
“Thank you, Captain. And forgive me if I presume too much, but you’ve also been in higher spirits these days.”
“Perhaps I am.” She paused. “I remember you asked me if it was treason to find contentment fighting under the enemy banner. Once, I’d never have imagined such a thing possible. Now, I’m not so sure. Imagine that: an archangel of the Temple serving the hated Imperium with pride. I do
n’t know what’s become of me.”
Taki frowned. “If I may speak frankly, I’m just glad to be rid of the Triada.” He spat as the last syllable left his mouth. Like any other clueless Polaris freshy graduated from the academy, he had once held the Agia Triada of the Temple in fearful reverence. After all, the three archangels—Michail, Yuriel, and Jibriil—had been the infallible personification of Temple Law and the Hoplite’s Code. That is, until Taki had actually met them.
“Mezeta told me, by the way. You asked her to kill Jibriil. Practically twisted her arm, too.”
His heart started to race. “I only spoke in the heat of anger…”
“That was truly bad form, and it could have earned you the gallows, Natalis.”
Taki bowed his head.
“And yet…” Lotte sighed. “I was also pleased. I didn’t think anyone cared.”
“I was impulsive. I know better, these days.”
She ran her fingertips across his cheek. “You’ve a kind heart. You make me regret things.”
Taki noticed that her hand trembled. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“I’ve been overly harsh with my words, and many times, I struck you all when I should have shown restraint. I treated my men the same when I was Yuriel, and now they’re dead. I can never earn their forgiveness.”
Taki clenched his fists and was silent for a moment. “Captain, when I asked Mezeta to kill the Archangel Jibriil, she told me that the only reason we hadn’t been hanged for our failures was because of what you endured. You saved our lives so many times. I have no right to judge you. I can only praise you.”
“I merely did my duty. And did it poorly, at that.”
“Now you’re the one morosely refusing a compliment.” He cracked a wry smile. “You’ll be a spinster forever at this rate.”
Lotte’s lips parted in disbelief, and she pushed Taki hard enough to bowl him over on the floor. He started to laugh. Her face flushed, and she crossed her arms. “No one likes a smartass!”
“Aye, there’s nothing more useless than a man like me.”
Her expression softened, and she bent to help him. “Do you really think I deserve praise, Natalis?”