by Aeryn Leigh
Good. You lot stay right there. I'm not finished with you yet.
From the landing, Merrion heard faint screams and wails of terror and distress, of agony and unknown depths of pain, coming from below. He looked down. Ground floor, probably a basement beneath that.
He took a deep breath in, and all the way out.
On the next breath, he started down the stairway three steps at a time, bounding down now with the MP 40 at the ready. On the bottom of the stairs he emptied the whole clip into the collection of Inka personnel on the ground floor. He dropped to his knees and went in a sliding crouch behind a hardwood desk just to the right of the stairway, as for the first time upon entering the building the enemy returned fire.
Merrion took out the empty magazine and slammed a fresh one home from the webbing around his lower back. Bullets slammed against the back of the wooden desk, and he mentally assessed the situation. Thirteen were in the room, he hit six. That leaves seven versus one.
Not bad odds.
Peeking around the desk’s corner he got a glimpse of where the soldiers had taken cover. Behind desks on the far side of the room. Almost full cover, but not quite.
Merrion aimed carefully at the four inches of space between the rear partition of the desks and the stone tile floor, and held down the trigger, spraying the small gap with thirty-four 9mm bullets ricocheting off the floor into the knees and ankles of the huddled men.
Without waiting to reload Merrion charged their position and put a bolt through the forehead of a soldier stupid enough to stick his head up. Vaulting over the last desk, daggers out, with quick flashes of the blade snuffed the remaining lives.
Panting now, he ran back over to the main entrance door, and double-checked it was still barricaded from the inside. Two great, thick hardwood beams draped across it. Very good.
He quickly scavenged replacement magazines for his MP 40 and prepared to go down the large iron basement trapdoor, in the centre of the room.
With a grunt, the trapdoor lifted. The hinges creaked loudly. Deliberately. Why is that? said the analytical part of himself. Psychological intimidation?
Then the smell hit. The stench mixed with disinfectant was so strong it was like hitting a physical wall as he carefully made his way down the spiral staircase. Oil lanterns lined the stone walls and three steps before the bottom he sat down on the iron step and put his boots back on.
Merrion breathed through his mouth. The corridor stretched far into the distance under the mountain. On either side, metal bars and doors, at least twenty of them. Going down the corridor he moved from barred room to barred room, through unlocked metal doors, doors that had no need for locks.
There was no need for locks, as the occupants of each room couldn’t walk or even crawl.
MERRION REACHED down into the side of his left calf and pulled out an untreated dagger. Suspended in medical harnesses, feet and hands removed after tests performed, men and women of the Republic's First and Proud Army hung like puppets to be played with. On some, bare patches of skin were swollen with huge pus-filled blisters. On others, limbs had been stuck in buckets of ice blocks with the opposite limb suspended over bubbling pots of boiling water.
Eyes had been mechanically forced open and liquid poured and dripped onto them from glass jars and rubber tubing suspended above, eating away the eyeballs one drip at a time just leaving empty pus-filled sockets.
And other experiments that defied description in their systemic and methodical horrors.
Merrion took all this in, and in bare seconds, and with sympathetic prayers to Gods he barely believed in, moved from room to room mercifully ending the lives of people he once called friends.
Chapter Sixty-Four
KILLER DROP BEARS
AT THE FAR end of the corridor lay a single door. Merrion examined the lock. The lock mechanism seemed far in advance of even Merrion's expert lock-picking skills.
Key. Had to be a key here somewhere.
He ran back down the corridor to the two bodies by the stairwell and went through their pockets. Nothing. He patted down their bodies. Still nothing.
He then checked their necks and around the second one retrieved a long, slender steel necklace wrapped around the guard’s neck, with an ornate key attached. Merrion broke it off with a savage yank and jogged back down the corridor. The key inserted smoothly, like a warm knife through butter, and with a faint click opened.
The unmistakable sound of a screaming Australian split the air.
"I ALREADY TOLD YOU. Any moment, a mob of armoured kangaroos is going to come bursting through that bloody door." Mick took savage intakes of breaths, recovering from screaming his guts out, his long beard brushing his face. He hung upside down by his bare ankles in the cold, barren room. The interrogation room.
Once again, the Inquisition officer in front of him turned the metal wheel to the right and the jagged metal vice that was moments away from crushing his genitals advanced another millimetre or two. "Your accent. What kind of English is it? Kangaroos?" said the large Inquisition officer, one eyebrow raised.
"Yes, from Australia."
"And where is this Australia?"
"In the Southern Hemisphere. Earth, you bastard."
"There's nothing there but sea dragons and daemons," said the officer.
"I'm telling you it does exist. Within hours a whole battalion of armoured killer drop bears will descend upon this fortress, mate."
"You're lying," he said, and rotated the iron wheel ninety degrees more.
The man from Brunswick gave an unholy scream as his crown jewels were slowly crushed.
The officer released the pressure just a smidgen, then reached over to the metal tray full of ugly looking instruments on the wooden side table. He picked up a crude set of pliers and bent down so that his face was level with Mick's. "I shall only ask you once more, heathen," he said. "What is your objective, where did you come from and what is the numerical strength of your forces arrayed? And this time, speak English, or die."
THE FANTASTICALLY HEAVY iron and steel door stopped a few inches ajar. Shit. Merrion took a step back and gave the door a hard shove with his right leg. He entered the room. And took in the scene with a single glance.
Merrion's left index finger twitched, and a liquid-tipped bolt pierced the torturer's upper right thigh. Merrion waited for him to fall to the ground.
He didn't.
Merrion watched as ten feet away, the officer reached down and pulled the bolt out, red blood staining the otherwise pristine white uniform. The other hand held a handgun right at Merrion. The man gave a nasty chuckle. "One of the advantages of doing God's own work every day. One develops immunity to such poisons. Tell me, how did you get your hands on the Necro-Death Adder's venom? It is so vanishingly hard to obtain. All my attempts to grow the snakes in captivity have failed. Now put the crossbow down gently at your feet, or your friend here will die even more painfully."
"Oh, he's not my friend," said Merrion breezily. "I barely even know him. In fact, I didn't even know he was here."
"You didn't?" said Mick.
"No, I didn't, you uncouth drunken barbarian." Merrion started lowering Amor Fati. "Although while you are there, you can get rid of his bushranger beard with a Glasgow kiss."
He winked.
Mick tensed his stomach muscles up and swiftly slammed his forehead right into the man's groin. The officer sagged, and fired. The bullet shaved Merrion's left temple as he produced yet another knife from his folds and threw it right through the man's eyeball socket and deep into the officer's brain.
"Not immune to steel I reckon," said Mick, wheezing, the body crumpling by his head.
The man in black lifted Mick's torso, removed the clamp and with a single stroke cut the leather cords and placed him on the ground. "Easy my friend," said Merrion. "Looks like I got to you just in time. Did you see the cells above?"
"Yeah," said Mick. "Yeah I did."
"The mission has changed." He helped Mi
ck to his feet, and handed him his clothes piled on the lower shelf of the table. "We need to find Laurie, and find him now."
Chapter Sixty-Five
TARGET FIXATION
ELLA SHOOK HER HEAD. Target fixation, it will get you every time. The Catalina barrel-rolled back out over the bay at three-thousand feet, the two seaplanes in pursuit, the forward gunners relentless, firing burst after burst of machine-gun fire. Ella levelled out after the full 360° roll, enemy fire passing through where her engines would have been, and the guns fell silent as they replaced magazines.
Finally. Took them long enough. Now here is something you can't do. She twisted both turbo-controllers full clockwise.
With a screaming howl of raw horsepower, the pair of Wright-Cyclone radials at maximum power, Ella pointed the nose straight up at the sky aiming for the heavens thanks to three thousand plus horses.
Climb, beautiful, climb.
The altimeter wound steadily, and in the little side mirror miraculously unbroken her attackers fell behind trying to match her manoeuvre. Her airspeed dropped however with every foot of height gained, falling ever slower as she approached her stall speed.
Come on, come on, stall you bastards.
In the shaking mirror, they stalled, and flipped over, for the moment out of control.
Got you.
She applied full rudder just as the aircraft started its own stall, and the Cat yawed, facing down at the two falling seaplanes, turning within its own wingspan radius.
A hammerhead Immelmann turn straight from the Great War and the masters of aerial combat.
Now the Catalina pointed at the enemy, and the 20mm sang, breaking apart the closest Supermarine in a fireball of orange and red and then the second, the last rounds smashing into the pilot and gunner.
Ella pulled the stick up, as the cannon clicked empty. Got them. Just over four thousand feet over the ocean, she swung around for the rendezvous point.
The starboard radial exploded in a hail of bullets.
HOW MANY FRICKEN' aircraft were there? She frantically reached for the fuel pump control to close the fuel line as she fled for safety, her gloved fingers straining to reach it as she fought the controls, the Cat wanting to side-dive toward the waters below.
The side mirror shattered as another burst ripped through the space between the motor and the cockpit, the slipstream sending shards of broken glass straight back into her face.
With a desperate lunge, her hand found the fuel off switch for the dead engine and closed it, but the starboard motor still burned.
The mountain. Head for the mountain. With the remaining engine open wide, Ella aimed at the highest peak and did her best to dodge the incoming fire.
What was the horsepower rating on those cloned 1930's Hispano-Suiza V8's? Couldn't be more than a couple of hundred, surely. One-fifty, most likely. Even with one engine, she held a ten-to-one advantage.
They had to survive first. Ella stole a glance back, to where Rob still lay strapped to the bench. He better be okay. The area around him peppered with bullet holes. Actually, there wasn't much of the Cat that wasn't covered in holes.
Thank you geodesic frames. Hang in there, beautiful.
Another burst struck the right wing, and the controls instantly became a little sluggish to input. Half of the aileron no longer existed.
Ella sighed, and the altimeter hit seven thousand. The mountain loomed, the fortress far below and to her left.
The seconds went by, and more, the incoming fire less accurate, as the Catalina out-climbed the Supermarine. They went through the first layer of clouds, and Ella turned her head, and carefully spat out the slivers of glass stuck around her lips.
She tasted blood. Great, more scars.
The twin peaks occupied the entire forward view. Covered in snow, but reflecting an orange light as sunset approached, it did look magnificent, and awe-inspiring.
The air grew colder, and the port radial didn't skip a beat. You had to give it to the Americans, maybe they could engineer marvels.
Then, the enemy fire stopped. Now they were alone. Or so she hoped. There was no way to be sure, so the plan remained the same. The long way back to Hellsbaene, through the mountain pass and around the coastline to prevent leading any Inquisition forces right to them.
Precious minutes passed without attack, then some more, until Ella nursed the crippled aircraft through the alpine pass.
"ROB? ROB?" Ella shouted his name, on the off chance he was still alive, that he'd come out of unconsciousness. No response. Scheissen. The glare of the two suns off the snow, even with her sunglasses, astonished her. In the far distance, the shadow of their aircraft raced up and down valleys and little rocky clefts, between the gigantic mountain peaks either side.
They reached the highest point of the mountain pass, and Ella dropped the nose, reducing throttle, wishing she had a fuel indicator. Searching her memory, she did the mathematics in her head, based upon what she knew of the hourly consumption of the Wright-Cyclones, and their fuel load.
It just had to be getting close. Twenty-minutes left, maybe. With the dogfighting and lost fuel from the starboard motor, verdammt close.
As if reading her mind, the port engine stuttered. It came back to life, then faltered again.
The shoreline cliffs lay ahead, just before the horizon, and Ella descended into the shadows, the mountain range blocking the suns. Only a few more miles till open water, then a few more after that around to the left, to Hellsbaene and the fleet and safety.
The port engine died.
The Catalina lost altitude, the mountainside only one thousand odd feet below.
Ella pressed the starter button, and was rewarded with a few more seconds of power, and the Catalina ran out of fuel.
Just a mile left before the cliffs and a little plateau by its edge, the airspeed fell, and Ella lifted the nose up, dancing with the Catalina's stall envelope. They would still make it. They could still make it. Five hundred feet off the ground. We can do this.
The Cat stalled.
Fell.
Fuck.
She hit the rocky, snowy ground and bounced, ripping off the side pontoons then flew into the air a hundred more feet, then hit the slope again, hard, jarring her skull. The Catalina bounced no more, skidding down the mountainside as Ella tried to brace herself. She couldn’t avoid a rocky outcrop as it tore off the port wing, throwing her violently into the main section of the fuselage. The Cat screamed its death song ripping itself into the mountainside until all went black.
Chapter Sixty-Six
NOTHING ELSE MATTERS
ELLA OPENED HER EYES. Blinked. Correction. One eye. The other wouldn't open. In the darkness and biting cold, Ella struggled to make out any shapes at all. She raised her right hand and waved it in front of her face. She could barely see it. But her arm felt weird, like its mass grew lighter the closer it got to her head.
Ah. She was upside down. One after the other senses came back. And with it, pain. All the pain. Something was cutting into her right upper thigh and just below her left shoulder. She couldn't move her left arm. Ella tried wiggling her toes. Only the barest sensation came back.
Ella patted along her body with her gloved fingers and found the canvas webbing digging into her flesh. Stuck in the safety straps which lined the two benches.
"Rob," she said, croaking. Ella tried again. "Rob?"
Silence.
Her pocket knife. The Swiss army knife in her left breast pocket of her flight jacket. She tried to reach for it but couldn't, straps barring the way.
And there was light.
Orange, flickering light, in the corner of her vision.
Fire.
Snowflakes swirled in front of her eye, and now she could see a lot better. The fuselage had broken in two, just behind the exit doors, the tail section nowhere to be seen in the darkness. The rest of the Catalina lay upside down, the section they were in. They. On the opposite side, still strapped down securely by Mick
, laid Rob. She could see his breath in the cold with every exhalation.
Still alive.
Good. In the large jagged diamond-shaped hole right under him, she could see a section of mangled propeller. The cockpit area had been squashed like a pancake against whatever it was they had smashed headfirst into. Rocks she guessed.
The orange light grew stronger. Ella twisted her head to see. The port radial had torn off, pulverising the fuel bladder where the main wing bisected the fuselage, a dozen feet away the small flame only the size of a fist, began to consume the broken wooden frame around it.
The whole aircraft was wood and with the vapours contained in the fuel bladder the whole thing would light up like a Roman candle.
Scheisse.
Ella twisted and turned her torso, trying to get enough space between her body and the webbing for her hand to pass through. It wouldn't. She put the tip of her glove between her teeth and yanked it off, and tried again. Her fingers found passage, and seconds later pulled the pocket knife out.
Still holding onto her precious glove with her teeth, she flicked open the blade and started cutting into the canvas, first around her thigh, then her torso.
Only with the final stroke did she consider what laid underneath her. She fell two feet onto smashed geodesic framework, and swore a lot more. Ella thought she was in pain before. As blood returned to limbs long gone to sleep, even her heart beating felt like too much movement, every twitch agony.
But she had to move. The fire grew brighter, larger. She focused her mind on one thing: Amelia.
Nothing else matters.
Forcing herself up into a sitting position, she involuntarily screamed, but kept moving. The snow blew into what remained of the fuselage, and she began the search for the survival gear, knowing it would be pointless for her to pull Rob out only to die together, frozen from exposure.