Painkiller: Odin's Warriors - Book 2

by Aeryn Leigh

  The First and Last made it to the stairwell, and the foot of the golden throne, somehow escaping the full attention of the monsters' wrath, but as the nearest point of the diamond reached the stairwell, six creatures came into view and scuttled across the ceiling and fell straight into their midst and all the combat prowess in the world seemed childlike as the daemons reaped souls left and right. Soldiers went to their stricken comrade’s sides to offer help and were smote fifty feet into the air crushing against the stone, bones snapping as if twigs.

  Merrion put a crossbow bolt into the closest daemon's head and the damage barely seemed to register to the creature as it gutted another soldier. Merrion reached into his pocket and pulled out the last of the necro-death-adder venom and dunked the remaining bolt tips in, and loaded Amor Fati. Despite the terror in his very soul, Merrion charged the creature as it reared up for another swing of its bone sword and dropped to his knees. In the pools of blood, Merrion slid underneath it and point-blank fired the poison-tipped bolt right into its hideous shining cluster of eyes as one of its rear limbs slammed into the ground microseconds after where Merrion's legs had just been.

  The creature staggered as it lost control of its limbs one by one, and with an anguished alien scream collapsed and became still, as its body glowed bright green and illuminated everything in a wide radius.

  Merrion looked at his leather pouch. Four bolts. He turned his head, and saw another dozen run across the ceiling straight for them.

  Bother.

  GRIFFIN AND MICK led the team back down the stairs, around and around the steps and came to a screeching halt five steps from the landing. At the end of the mess hall, more daemons skittered out and Mick felt his knees tremble and his heart quaver as the lights went out. So, this is how it ends. He checked the ammunition mag. Seventeen rounds left, another two clips in his webbing. Behind him, he heard Laurie's voice.

  "Penitents, get to the injured and move them back. Those with MP 40's, aim for the eyes — heads — whatever the fuck they are and come with me!"

  Laurie moved past and with the rest climbed up the tables once more, right until the end, masters of their fate.

  He threw the torch out onto the barricade.

  Chapter Ninety-Three

  FUCK YES

  ELLA CALLED up a tactical display searching for the quickest entry into the mountain. She spun the interior of the mountain around mentally and saw myriad corridors and tunnels, a massive internal space filled with human lifeforms interspersed with aliens. Thousands upon thousands of humans. Where would Laurie be and his team? There seemed an option of searching for particular chemical residues, a rotating symbol of hydrogen atoms in the tactical menu under a tiny magnifying glass, for sniffing them out, but Ella still had no idea how to control that. Stupid language barrier.

  The bay of the mountain stronghold itself was just over the horizon now. She looked at the map quickly and saw the main entrance, clogged with humans and aliens, completely blocked. There had to be another way in. There. An escape tunnel leading off from the biggest internal space and out into the mountain side perpendicular to the main entrance, with a narrow, winding path down to the rocky shoreline.

  She changed heading, straight for the exit and willed the jet aeroplane wings to reduce speed. It didn't. The foam-tipped waves flicked past in one unending blur and she entered the bay, the dozens of warships on the far side listing and abandoned, bereft of lifeforms and only now did her speed reduce and her altitude increase, swinging for the side exit.

  Ella glanced at the map. The only humans remaining within miles were inside the mountain. Smoke bellowed up from fires burning at random throughout the stronghold sections, as if remnants of a desperate battle to flow the tide of monsters. Or, the monsters set it on fire. She thought of the pair of its front limbs, ending in three fingers and an opposable thumb.

  She shuddered, and began to hum a tune that sprung into her mind to wipe the memory of the tunnel encounter. The song echoed inside her head, and to Ella's amazement she heard it repeated back at her, in the suit, through her ears, note for note, string for string. Da DA Dan Nah dah da da Nah nah. Ella decelerated harder, her experience telling her that they were still doing over four hundred miles per hour when the suit somersaulted over in the exact opposite direction and went into hard burn, her display showing the wings fully extended at right angles, slowing easily and her body pushed deep into the suit. Finally, with the gentlest movement her armoured boots touched the mountainside.

  A faint click, the sound of something smacking into rock, and she stepped forward and around, to see the jet pack standing vertically, mounted on a pole in the rocks, its wings folded up tight. An eagle at rest. Right.

  Ella ran through the bolted wooden door without bothering to open it, splinters showering everywhere, and urged the suit onward, running as fast as she physically could. The power armour augmented it as the corridor descended for a short while before levelling out and as she ran, she began singing along with the music blaring. The dragonfly launched off ahead, sending tactical data back.

  It exited the tunnel and out into the cavernous space sending another quick pulse of blue light. The information came back, Ella not believing it. Hundreds and hundreds of orange aliens were ripping apart the Inquisition army, a lighter shade of red, those still alive anyway, concentrated at the front of the space to her left. A diamond formation of other humans at the rear in blue were taking severe damage from a dozen aliens, and below them, down and in a winding set of stairs, a smaller group besieged by more advancing aliens. Weapon readouts lit the display, and Ella recognised the scrolling outline of one of them.

  A cut-down Browning M2.

  Betty.

  Ella burst out of the exit door hidden behind a wide tapestry on the side elevated landing running on full-emergency combat power, right into the pitch-black space and put one foot onto the stone railing, launching up out into the air doing one-hundred eighty-five miles per hour and, screaming her daughter's name, smashed down the heavy weapon's trigger as the heads-up display swam with viable targets of opportunity. Ella poured coils of orange righteous vengeance into everything and anything among the entangled lifeforms on the left as the ammunition rune counters fell then lit red.

  The cavernous throne room burst into light as aliens and humans became living torches and with a granite-shattering thud, she landed in the middle of the hall and brought the empty torpedo-casing hard down upon a dazed marine raising its gun at her, mashing him flat.

  Die you fuckers, die.

  She dropped the weapon, and knelt, her left hand finding the battle hammer and hefted it. The secondary weapon display of her suit came alive, showing an outline. A Gatling gun. On her right arm? On her left, at the bottom of the forearm, another gun registered. Fuck yes.

  She stood up, her eyes shining, her lungs shouting, and activated both weapons but with a single thought. The HUD flashed cross hairs of moving targets and Ella blew them apart in a wide arc, her torso swivelling left to right, right to left, tracking movement, and engaging. Aliens ran across the high ceiling toward her and died in their dozens, joining their kind twitching on the floor as bioluminescence dripped from the ceiling in coloured liquid showering rain. Marines exploded into clumps of red gore struck by a single shell from the spinning Gatling or burst into fire from the incendiary armour-piercing forearm gun.

  Ella twisted around, and put one foot down, then another, charging the diamond, and an opera she had seen with Helena in the fall of '38 in London featuring that gorgeous fat lady and that soprano voice, Gott Verdammt, that voice added itself to the mix.

  The dragonfly shot overhead, stopping at the waist of the huge statues, and pulsed another blue wave. The aliens were breaching the barricade underneath and rushing her friends' position.

  Ella cried out for those ahead to make way and fired at the monsters at the diamond's perimeter before the opportunity to fire without hitting humans disappeared. Aliens exploded in a veritable lig
ht show of green and shattered black carapace. Then she was among them, her warhammer smiting foes as her other arm chainsaw-cleaved. She sidestepped here and there, past the astounded humans and someone who looked like an older Marietta. Then yelling for Laurie, she breached the stairwell as humans pressed themselves as hard as they could against the walls to let the living incarnation of wrath go past. So it was that Ella spiralled down and down, and into the mess hall.

  Chapter Ninety-Four

  RIDE OF THE VALKYRIES

  "IS THAT WAGNER?" said Andrew, sweat rolling down his face. The barricade burned, stopping the advance of most of the aliens. The few who tried moving over it met the flamethrower being fired by Laurie and Griffin one table up and retreated.

  Mick raised his head, and mopped his brow. "Wagner? Why the fuck would Wagner be playing here, mate?" He coughed again, clouds of black smoke washing over them, the smell of wood and something rotten, enough to make you gag. Mick held the MP 40 so tight, Andrew could see white knuckles.

  Above them, Laurie fired the flamethrower yet again, and the tank ran empty with a loud hiss. As did Griffin’s. Through the smoke and flames he saw a multitude of alien heads turn and look right at him, one long wall of clustered eyes, and in that moment, read their minds, and knew, they weren't just dumb creatures. The conflagration before him started to peter out, as what remaining fuel load vanished into black charcoal.

  On the edge of his hearing, through the tinnitus, he heard classical music and opera. Nah, couldn't be. He pushed the flamethrower aside and readied his MP 40, his mouth dry.

  Next to him, Griffin looked at Beowulf, who had started to smile.

  "The Valkyries come to ferry us to Valhalla," roared Beowulf. The other Vikings cheered.

  Griffin rose one eyebrow. "Damn Norsemen." Then the sound of canvas ripping, one massive nasty piece of cloth being torn apart fibre by fibre, strand by strand, impossible to pick out individual shots. The uncanny sound of multiple MG 42’s but on hella steroids. Detonating thumps of concussion rounds followed, then, there it was, the sound of a woman screaming.

  Ella screaming.

  For Amelia.

  For Amelia.

  The aliens charged, and Griffin found himself yelling her name too and those of his daughters as the gun in his hands fired burst after burst into the rushing horde. The music carried the alien terrors away and the others joined him. Then the mag clicked empty, and he was standing, they all were standing, to die on their feet. They all had a weapon in their hands and the enemy in front of them and here verily it was a good day to die. The front rank of aliens reached the top of the barricade and launched into them, myriad eyes twinkling death.

  Griffin parried one limb, the block like stopping a falling log, even staggering him, barely missed another intent on removing his head, took the tip off a third limb with a wet crunch of snapping carapace and buried his axe into its glistening eye orbs, jelly popping, falling under the weight of the dying, screaming, collapsing creature, and Griffin too screamed with the blinding pain.

  Laurie emptied the remaining rounds of his machine pistol point-blank into another and dropped the weapon, reaching for his sword. The blade of Hffylson ignited, making him almost drop it in shock but he recovered in time to slice open an alien's torso making for Beowulf. The ice-blue blade sliced as if going through butter, cauterising the flesh as it seared but the creature's momentum slammed into the last Viking King and carried them both over the edge.

  He looked over to see Griffin smothered, howling, heard Mick and Andrew and Thorfinn below still yelling and firing. Laurie moved to give aid when something black and spiny slammed into his side and he too fell, the flaming sword swept from his grip and extinguishing before his eyes. The air swept past.

  Large metal hands caught him. He craned his head up as he was laid roughly on the floor and saw one huge figure in armour leap impossibly upward, all three tables in a single bound, landing on top with a worrying creak of timbers. It brought death to the aliens with mighty blows from its blunt weapon as Wagner, fucking Wagner, blasted from it, and the little minigun rained explosive shells and one long sword-arm made of revolving chain sheared everything in two, and then, thank Christ, he passed out from the pain.

  Chapter Ninety-Five

  ORIGINAL NORSE

  THE LAST OF the alien nightmare creatures fell, its head severed by the reverse, bladed-side of the warhammer. She stopped the music and concentrated. The room clear, Ella moved to Griffin's side and lifted the alien off with one heave. She knelt by him, and frantically watched her optical display. He would live. Somehow, all her friends would live. If, and it was a big if, medical attention could be brought to them quickly. Beowulf moaned off to her right, and she pulled another alien off, spikes embedded in his torso and lower body.

  "Mick," she said. "Mick!" Her voice thundered from the suit loudspeaker.

  A head popped over the second tier of tables. "Bugger me. Ella?"

  "Yes, it's me. Look, whatever you do, do not touch the spikes. Pass it along. Where's Merrion?" A hand pointed upward. "Stay here." Without waiting for the reply, she sprang forward, back up the stairs, six steps at a time until she came back to the room above. The men and women backed away. "Merrion?" The sound boomed in the space. "Merrion!"

  "Ella?" A familiar shape stepped forward, his jaw open. "Where did you get that?"

  "It's a long story." She summoned the dragonfly with a thought, then sent it in the direction of the main entrance, not noticing the stares of those around her. "Who are these people?"

  "A lost army. Ours, in fact."

  A woman joined him, the one like Marietta. "We owe you our thanks."

  Ella nodded. "Do not touch the spikes. I will return to offer aid once the path is clear," she said, observing the miniature map in the corner of her vision. Orange dots still flashed, icons of humans and aliens, and the urge to treat both as viable targets rose as she sprinted for them.

  Halfway down the room leaping and dodging the vast number of bodies littering the way, Ella decided to only fire at those humans who resisted and found herself engaged with a battle of wills as the targeting part of the suit tried repeatedly to mark all combatants as hostiles. She hit top charging speed and imagined a cheetah racing across the savannah to close upon the gazelles drinking their fill at the waterhole. But no, we only want the old, the slow, the weakest members of the herd and with that at the forefront of her mind she fired microburst after microburst from the rotating autocannon into the remaining alien creatures clear and separate from what remained of the Inquisition army, a little under nine-hundred strong by her estimation. All bundled together, two burnt out crosses at their centre. Ella dispatched the aliens on the near side and watched dismayed as arms lifted toward her connected to faces contorted with rictus grins of hate.

  So be it.

  7mm caseless rounds slammed into every torso with a pointing finger and weapons aimed at her and detonated fractions of a second later. Ella jumped over the wall of white marines splattered with red and landed between the crosses. The survivors did not fire, or run forward and attack. The main corridor out lay jammed solid with dead human bodies interspersed with aliens burrowing through their flesh and guts and bones coming for her, for all of them. Ella waited until the first daemon broke through, making a path which the one behind it made wider still, and the marines fled, rushing past.

  Ella raised her left arm.

  She killed the last of the aliens in the immediate vicinity with nine seconds of forearm gunfire.

  It was over.

  ELLA RAN BACK DOWN the vast room, the dragonfly hovering just aft of her helmet in matching formation. "Medical aid. What is there?" She looked at the heart symbol and opened it and a display of the twin pods on the wingsuit formed. She veered right and accelerated, leaping onto the balcony, ignoring the squishy sound her boots made as they fell with each stride on the dead. She made her way outside and recovered the medical pods.

  She rejoined Merrion,
and barked orders, as the dragonfly darted here and there, and the wounded were laid out under where it stopped, graded in rows from the most severe to the lightly-wounded. The twin pods opened, and Ella followed the simple graphical instructions on screen and assembled the mobile triage hospital at the foot of the dead emperors. Eight stretchers, of the exact same type that had operated on her, moved along the rows, somehow floating in mid-air all by themselves, leapfrogging over each other, each a rectangular cube of blue as they operated, punctuated by the odd flash of orange. Mick had formed his own little medical squad, and gave aid to those waiting in the rear rows.

  Laurie, Griffin, and Beowulf lay in the second row, badly hurt. Ella fell onto one knee, and took stock.

  Merrion walked up to her, and even with Ella kneeling, his head only reached her chest. "Thank you."

  "You are most welcome," she said. "Who are they?" The soldiers kept their distance from her.

  "The missing Republican First Army, presumed slaughtered at the truce accords. And that woman there," pointing at the shaven-headed figure barking her own commands, "is Marietta's mother. General Sarah Versetti, former Commander of the Republic."

  "Oh." She thought for a second. That explains the resemblance. She switched tracks. "Can you speak Norse?"

  "The Viking language? I can to a basic extent."

  "No. The original Norse." She spied out the nearest Viking, only one of five still standing, unhurt even, and beckoned her over. Lagertha Lodbrok. Her kin joined her. Ella stood, looking around, and thudded over to a dead alien, ripped off its front limb, and used the dripping green blood as a gigantic paintbrush and drew the symbols on her display straight onto the rear throne wall where it glowed in the dark.