Ascendance

by John Birmingham

  Lucille seemed to understand his dark mood, and her battle hymn quieted into a lament after a while, a soothing tune that settled his frayed and raw emotions. In this way they moved from floor to floor, dispatching the beasts without passion or relent, until, eight floors later, they found their second Thresher in a large apartment with an open floor plan.

  Dave had just half a moment’s notice when Lucille came fully alive in his grip again, her murder song suddenly roaring up out of the funeral lamentation he’d been humming along with. He heard Karen call out her warning.

  ‘Hooper! It’s here . . .’

  And then his vision fell apart and they dropped out of warp and into a wild storm of pain and disorientation. It passed, quickly, but not before their exit from the suite was blocked by a wedge of snarling Hunn, while other daemonum poured out of the rooms where they’d been hiding. Dave heard the crack of Karen’s pistol, firing rapidly, muzzle flash stabbing out into the dark. Her aim was good and she dropped the better part of a whole war band which had come screaming through the double doors of a room to her left. Headshots, all of them. Sparks flew when one round struck a helmet, but the extravagant fireworks he’d come to expect when hot lead hit chain mail and armour plate were missing. Monsters roared in fury, screeched in shock and pain, and fell to the hard wooden floor with great muffled thuds and thumps. But more of them came on.

  Dave was briefly aware of city lights flashing on a 400-year-old katana blade and then he was swinging his own weapon with barely directed savagery. Unlike Karen he had no combat training. But he did have Lucille and he could still move with terrible speed. He fell back on his football training, the only real training he’d had in the art and science of physical confrontation – a couple of weeks judo classes as a small boy notwithstanding. Dave ran straight at the nearest war band, the closely packed threshing machine of yellow teeth and bared talons that Karen hadn’t targeted.

  ‘HUNN UR . . .’

  He hit them before they could get their war chant rolling, scything into the group with Lucille, who seemed to glow in the pale electric light pouring through shattered windows and billowing silk curtains. Lucille’s cutting wedge swept aside the initial thrust of half a dozen blades and axeheads, splintering an ironwood shaft, and smashing aside the sharp and hungry steel with a discordant clanging. And then he was in among them, swinging wildly, jabbing, lashing out, feeling the blunt fist of Lucille’s hammerhead crushing armour, the thick axehead crunching and tearing through boiled leather and chain mail. Claws raked at him, a blade ran through his shoulder and he screamed, but he fought on, a mad turning gyre of violence. He pistoned out a kick and connected with the unprotected balls of some unnamed Hunn. They popped like rotten melons. The Hunn roared in pain and outrage as it doubled over, unable to control itself. Before Dave knew what he was doing, Lucille described a tight, blurring arc, impacting the back of the Hunn’s skull, blowing it apart in a hot burst of gore. He swung again, and again, the magical weapon beginning to describe fast, whirring loops that broke legs, severed arms and cleared a fighting space around him.

  Lucille’s battle song swelled inside his head. An aria of killing. Dave burned with healing heat and with the energy of his counter-attack. He was dimly aware of crashing glass and breaking wood, of indiscriminate destruction, but none of it mattered. He gave himself over to Lucille’s hungers. As she had when he’d fought and defended desperately against Karen at the Russian consulate, the enchanted weapon seemed to need only his touch to unleash bloody mayhem. Dave felt himself less the perpetrator of this terrible violence than its channel. He did not use the weapon. She used him.

  And then it was done.

  ‘Through here, Hooper.’

  He fell back to earth, found himself on his knees, bloodied and corporeal, surrounded by piles of dead monster meat.

  ‘Whu . . .’

  He croaked, desert-mouthed and gagging on it.

  ‘Where? What?’

  The words were barely audible, but Warat seemed to hear and understand.

  ‘Through here,’ she said.

  He found her in a bedroom, extracting her magical sushi sword from the ass of a mid-sized Thresher which had tried, in the final moments of its cursed existence, to climb out through a window that was way too small to afford it an escape route.

  ‘Damn,’ he grimaced as the sword came free and she flicked off the intestinal gore. ‘That’s nasty.’

  ‘We need to fall back,’ she said. ‘Gather reinforcements. Send them ahead . . .’

  In spite of the toll taken by the combat and the damage done, Dave arced up.

  ‘No way,’ he said. ‘We’re not doing that again. You’re not sending a bunch of your little meat puppets into the next ambush just to give us a heads up.’

  The Threshrend let go with a gurgling moan as it died. A gush of foul-smelling bodily fluids poured out of the gaping wound Karen had made of its ass. She ignored the mess as she advanced on Dave, but not menacingly. She looked a picture of reason and poise.

  ‘Hooper, be real, we need to –’

  Lucille came up between them, the oversized steel head dripping gore and blocking Karen’s path, preventing her from laying hands on him.

  ‘We need to get on and finish these bastards,’ said Dave. ‘Without getting anyone else killed. Is there another Thresher in the house?’

  He could try to fire up the warp drive, but he was starting to dread the pain and madness that came with it when a Threshrend empath got inside his head.

  Karen returned her katana to its scabbard and reloaded the pistol she’d used to cut through the first wave of attacking Hunn.

  ‘You’re not thinking straight, Hooper.’

  ‘Maybe not, but I’ll do my own thinking from now on. You just keep your distance and tell me, is there another Thresher? Because if not, I say we hit pause and grab a snack.’

  Karen raised her eyes to the ceiling, and frowned as though displeased by a crack in the plaster she found there.

  ‘That was a helluva fight we just won,’ Dave explained. ‘But they weren’t even Hunn dominants. They didn’t have names. And we handled them without getting all Speedy Gonzales about it. We can take these things, Karen. We can.’

  She jacked the slide on the handgun. Still frowning.

  ‘And if the next ones are dominants. Or Grymm?’

  The window behind her crashed in before he could answer.

  Two Sliveen scouts swung in, one firing a crossbow from its free hand, the other flicking a brace of throwing stars directly at Dave’s face. It was only the fact he already had Lucille up to ward off Karen that saved him. The enchanted maul twitched and bunted away two of the dark, spikey missiles, but missed the third, which sliced open his ear before embedding itself in the wall behind him. He tried to warp, instinctively, but the world broke up in shattered mirror shards and bright silver spikes of pain to go with the scorching sensation that burned half of his head.

  He heard the handgun bark twice before the sound of gunfire was lost inside a louder maelstrom, an eruption that blew him forward off his feet. The ruined apartment whipped around him in a dizzying blur and he landed on something soft and hard and moving.

  Karen.

  ‘Get off me,’ she grunted, and Dave felt himself thrown into the air again, with such strength that for a moment he worried he might fly out of a window and drop all the way to the sidewalk.

  Trinder had wondered in LA whether he might survive such a fall.

  Dave remembered that, as he also remembered partying with Paris Hilton and lunching with Brad Pitt and having drinks with Pitt’s ex-wife.

  And Dave’s ex-wife, where was Annie? How was –

  He crashed into something again, and this time the impact was nothing but hard angles and machined surfaces. He’d landed in the kitchen. His vision was clear again but what he saw made no sense. The apartment was bigger. Much bigger, as though the owners had knocked down a wall, and extended their living room into the neighbour
’s place next door. That was understandable, he thought groggily. This place was a mess. They needed to renovate.

  His head swam and the floor seemed to shift underneath his butt. He was sitting down? Why was he sitting down on the job?

  Work to be done, Dave. They’d roared at him in their big dumb booming voices. What the fuck, Dave? Are you on board for the big win or what? There’s six billion fucking barrels down there. Let’s just go git ’em!

  But he wasn’t sitting down on the job in Houston or out on the Longreach. He was in New York. With a Russian lady. And there weren’t six billion barrels of oil here. There were Grymm. Six billion Grymm.

  No. Scratch that, he thought as his wits returned to him.

  There were a dozen of them. No. Thirteen Warriors Grymm. They muscled into the apartment through a breach in the wall. Flames licked at the ragged edges of the hole, which had not been there a moment or two before. Plaster dust choked the air and Warriors Grymm scrambled through, climbing over shattered masonry and around the twisted, buckled licorice whips of steel I-beams warped out of shape by . . .

  An explosion.

  There had been an explosion.

  Dave shook his head and jumped back to his feet, throwing off the last of his disorientation. The Grymm had lured them here. Another Guyuk trap most likely. And he’d stepped into it again. Only the flames, which even the Grymm cringed away from, and the twisted steel beams prevented the elite daemonum warriors from swarming the apartment. The Sliveen were down, one shot and the other opened up like a piñata by Karen’s sword work, but she was out of ammunition and fighting two of the Grymm on her own. The daemons held cleavers and wielded them with greater speed and skill than any ham-fisted Hunn, dominant or otherwise. Karen was moving so quickly to block and deflect and parry that she was just an impression of movement rather than something you could perceive and analyse. Dave had a flash of insight, understanding that she was using and being used by her weapon, just as he had been by Lucille. The bright blur of razor sharp steel rang like bells and neither of the Grymm were able to close with her for a killing stroke of their own. But nor could she break through their defences.

  Another Grymm emerged from the breach and joined the assault on Karen. She started to give ground against them. Dave took a step in their direction, meaning to charge into the fray with Lucille, but he realised with a start that he no longer held her. He could hear her, muted and far away, but the mad beauty of her song was not in his head. It was nearby but distant. Another Grymm, this one armed with a war hammer of its own, made it through the tangle of steel and fire and ran straight at Karen, horned feet pounding on the hardwood floor.

  For the briefest instant they were all silhouetted against the backdrop of the burning city and then Dave was charging into the fray too. He was exhausted, all but drained, and he wasn’t sure how he’d moved so quickly. He was dizzy and confused and not completely certain what he was doing, just that he’d picked up the nearest heavy object he could find and set his course for the daemonic threshing machine bearing down on Karin Varatchevsky. The words of his old football coach came back to him. Leave nothing in the tank Dave. Nothing in the tank. Well, he was running on fumes when he slammed into them with an enormous crash, like a truck running a stop light, and then three of the Grymm and one large, brushed steel refrigerator were flying through space, out of the window and tumbling down, end over end to the street far below. Dave almost followed them out into the void, but felt himself jerked back at the last second. Karen’s fist was bunched up in the collar of his coveralls, which ripped under the strain. He choked as she drove a kick into the remaining warrior, not targeting its well-protected centre mass, but the knee joint of its leading leg, which was planted firmly to provide a solid base for the mighty swing of its war hammer. Dave heard the joint come apart with a wet, crunching explosion of shattered gristle and bone. The Grymm’s shout of pain and surprise died to a gurgle on the point of her sword.

  It was too late though. There were too many of them. Lucille was nowhere Dave could see and only a faint mournful sigh reached him from where she lay. He had nothing more to spend in this fight. Karen was hunched over, trying to draw in a ragged breath, her eyes dark hollows as more Grymm poured into the room. Her gun was gone. She had trouble holding her sword. They were done. Nothing left. No reserves to draw on.

  It was time to die, the hero’s journey over.

  14

  Nobody ate the camera guy, but he did have a Sliveen bolt through his thigh, an injury he’d picked up attempting to flee. Threshy was torn between relief that the asshole hadn’t escaped, and irritation that he couldn’t do his job properly. The Grymm were not equipped to tend the wounds of human captives, or even remotely disposed toward the idea. In the end, they were all going into the blood pot, so why bother? If one died and spoiled there was always another tasty, slow-moving snack to replace them.

  Polly, the helpful intern, put another down-payment on her deliverance by suggesting they patch the cameraman up with the first-aid kit in the news van, and another woman, a midwife who’d been making her way home to the towers when she was caught up in the ambush, helped with cleaning and binding the wound. The camera guy wouldn’t be running any marathons, or even putting any weight on the injured limb for a long time, but they found a couple of plastic milk crates for him to sit on and that was enough. His sound man was missing, most likely fled, but the ever-obliging Polly proved more than equal to the task of holding a boom mike.

  Compt’n ur Threshrend had his press conference.

  A pre-record.

  He wasn’t dumb enough to go live and call down an air strike on their asses. And, as a bonus, if he fluffed a line he could go back and do it again. The Grymm led their prisoners through the grounds of the college, away from the car park which Threshy judged to be way too exposed. Thousands of residents in the project towers had a direct line of sight down on them, even if their attention was wholly taken by the war bands running amok inside the housing development.

  A playground area behind the main campus building, with good overhead cover from a stand of elm trees, promised enough space to corral the prisoners off camera, deploy the guard and record the presser. Guyuk was so much taller than Threshy that framing the shot was not a simple exercise. Camera guy, who was more than willing to cooperate for a chance at not being chewed to pieces, eventually declared himself satisfied with Threshy in the foreground, Guyuk looming over him a few metres behind, silently mouthing the line of script he’d been given. A shield wall of Lieutenants, Sergeants and warriors Grymm blocked most of the rainbow motif that would otherwise have rendered the shot even more strikingly perverse.

  ‘People of Earth,’ roared Threshy, before collapsing into fits of giggles. Threshrendum physiology had not evolved to express delight in humour of any sort, and it was a toss-up who was more unsettled by the empath daemon’s lulz: the Grymm or their terrified captives.

  ‘Threshrend!’ barked Guyuk when his patience ran out, which was pretty quickly. ‘Compose yourself.’

  ‘Sorry, boss,’ wheezed Threshy, still attempting to get some control over his laughing fit. ‘Sort of ass-planted into the ironic butt crack between reality and perception there.’

  The calflings exchanged confused and worried glances.

  The lord commander flexed his fore-claws, giant muscles bunching up and down his arms, causing the elaborate artwork tattooed into his hide to move and twist with sinuous grace. He gathered his temper with an obvious effort of will and growled, ‘Get on with it. Or do you forget the Dave is about in this settlement?’

  Threshy bounced up and down, eager to please and only a little sobered by the mention of Hooper.

  ‘Okay. Okay. I’m on it. And don’t worry about the Dave. We got his number. So, Polly? We good, here?’

  She nodded nervously.

  ‘Still recording.’

  ‘Okay.’ Threshy banged his fore-claws together, and took a deep breath. ‘Okay. Just edit this b
it out. Take it from “People of Earth”. Okay?’

  The light on the news camera glowed green. Polly dipped her head to him. The prisoners watched on anxiously.

  ‘People of Earth,’ said Threshy, managing to control his mirth. ‘I am Compt’n ur Threshrend, dar Superiorae dar Threshrendum ur Grymm. I speak for Lord Commander Guyuk ur Grymm, and through him for our Dread Majesty, She of the Horde.’

  He let go a nervous breath and it came out like a serpent’s hiss, which was totally in character, so he went with it. As far as possible, he knew he had to be more Compt’n than Trev’r, but it was not easy. The imprint of the first mind absorbed had shaped all that came after.

  ‘Your greatest city lies prone before us. Like a bitch . . . Gah!’

  He threw up his claws and stomped a few feet away. His video crew stood easy, or as easy as they could on the lip of the blood pot.

  ‘Come on, Threshy,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Get into fucking character. You can totes do this.’

  He heard Guyuk’s low animal growl and spun quickly on the lord commander, whose patience he was sorely testing.

  ‘My bad! It’s just the, er, the rituals of the calfling speaking ceremonies, they are not simple, my Lord. No, some crazy-ass complicated rituals we’re into here. But, just gimme some space. I don’t want to fuck this up. It’ll bring the Hammer of fucking Dawn down on us.’

  A lie, but one he could sell. Guyuk had never played Gears of War and any mention of mysterious human dawn hammers was more than enough to quiet an uppity daemon with a sunburn phobia. The lord commander said nothing, but relaxed out of his formal stance. Behind him, armour plate clattered softly and chain mail clinked as the solid shield wall of warriors Grymm relaxed slightly out of their own rigid postures.