Painkiller

by Aeryn Leigh

  Ella felt vibrations in the suit as something beneath powered up and juddered as a blue beam shot out over the top of her head and lanced toward the entrance pushing everything in its path aside.

  Clearing the runway.

  Ready.

  Ella felt nerves come alight all over her skin as the sensation of gel covering every available surface of her body and a counter appeared in the centre of her vision counting down runes. It reached the end.

  She instinctively gulped as the suit toppled forward off the edge of the throne and tried to raise her arms outward to stop the fall, then the attached engine ignited, and Ella catapulted forward with a terrific amount of G-force through the room and into the tunnel, now lit with cascading dashes of blue lights along its walls. Ella felt and watched the speedometer increase as they accelerated faster and faster the entire time maintaining the absolute precision of dead centre in the tunnel. The very same tunnel she had dragged Rob along in the dark but this time traversing its length in a fraction of the time until she reached the final long straight.

  Now, oh my Gott, oh my Gott, something like afterburners kicked in and Ella screamed out of the mountain side breaking the sound barrier as she did, the sonic boom clanging off the rocks as she broke Mach 1 sending seabirds from miles around scattering into the air. The suit banked hard to the right and descended to sea level, sea spray falling in arches all around her.

  The tactical map popped up with new alerts and Ella could see something like tiny representations of longships pursued by a half-dozen warships 30° to the left just over the horizon. Hellsbaene. There she thought, and the autopilot adjusted the new course and only seconds went past before they came into view. Hellsbaene and her three companions still afloat, including the Oslo, puffs of water erupting all around them as they fled the Inquisition Fifth fleet, before the tail end longboat took a direct hit and blew apart.

  In her mind, she selected the heavy weapon and assorted options presented themselves on screen showing different routes of attack. She chose the second. Again, the power suit banked hard like a raptor and came around in a wide, sweeping turn heading straight for the eighteen Inquisition ships lined abreast, staggered in twos. Ella lifted the heavy weapon at the edge of the horizon and her gloved fingers squeezed the trigger. A molten, searing shaft of roiling orange light spat from the torpedo’s end, and almost instantaneously turned the attacking ships pair by pair into infernos of light. As she shot past at a little over Mach 2 she screamed, "Hellsbaene!" and the suit resumed course to the mountain stronghold.

  Magnus and the others could only blink and look at each other as in a matter of moments, their fate almost assured, a glorious day to meet Odin, a great rolling wall of thunder came from the east. They witnessed a Valkyrie descend and with the power of Ragnarok immolate the enemy. As it went by, the god snapped the air in two with a single beat of its black feathered wings, rocking the longships with great plumes of water in its wake before vanishing in seconds on its return to Valhalla.

  The one thing they could not shake, as the eighteen burning ships slipped beneath the waters, and tiny bits of ash fell like rain, was that the Valkyrie who screamed Hellsbaene sounded a lot like Ella.

  Magnus gave praise to the gods, took a swig of mead, and went back to the task of trying to fix the throttle controls, the flagship’s engines non-functional, as they resumed course towards the rendezvous point via old-fashioned wind power, awe in their veins.

  Chapter Ninety-Two

  Masters Of Their Fate

  The killing began.

  Such a one-sided slaughter had never been seen on the shores of Elysium. Arrows buried deeply into the aliens' carapace yet did nothing to slow them. The rare hit with axes and swords removed the bottom few feet of limbs, and were rewarded with death, as bone swords the length of a man, killed multiple men with a single slash, and the monsters' remaining seven limbs tore apart those lucky enough to land such a blow.

  Bursts of light here and there, muzzle flashes from guns, all around in the inkiness, smears of phosphorescent blood from injured monsters, all a light show of death.

  Laurie found himself screaming at Versetti for them to retreat to the wide staircase for at least there they might escape the killing ground and present less of a target. Seconds later he heard Brutowsky give the order and the diamond Ninth shuffled backward as the ground underneath formed shallow lakes of red blood upon the polished stone floor. Their boots waded and splashed through the sticky liquid and all around the terrified screams of those in the front and centre of such a horror show.

  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 light 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!"