by Aeryn Leigh
"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.
No response.
"Draw me the numbers one to ten in runes if you can?"
The Viking woman knelt, and with her index finger, wrote the runes in a pool of drying human blood. "One through to ten."
Verdammt. They didn’t match. "Who would know this?"
"Magnus," said Lagertha. "And the scribes at Odinsgate."
"Thank you." The Vikings dispersed, and Andrew approached, jaw open, bursting into question after question before Merrion dragged him away, leaving Ella be.
Chapter Ninety-Six
Odin’s Warriors
Eventually the medical stretchers finished moving down the rows of the First and Last and the assault team, both suns long since set.
Ella consulted the medical graphics, which in the time the mobile hospital had been deployed changed colour from green to their now flashing red. They must be running low on supplies or energy, perhaps both. She directed them to the group of huddled prisoners, as the set of runes counting down from the moment she left hit single digits in the top middle of her vision.
Ella felt the nagging suspicion her time here soon would end. Nine minutes? Was that it? Scheissen. She walked over to Merrion and General Versetti and knelt. "I don't think I have much time. Neither do you. More of those creatures will come, attracted by the stench of death, and I don't think you should be here when they do, you know? In the bay at the bottom of the mountain I saw enough abandoned warships to transport you all back to Fairholm. The aliens climbed up the anchor chains from the seabed below. Merrion please, your map?"
Merrion retrieved the silk map and laid it on the floor. Ella extended her left index finger and a massive hunk of pointed metal precisely landed on a section of coastline. "I found the suit here via this entrance. Rob is there, he is doing okay, but in a coma. The entrance is at least one thousand feet above the ground, but you should see the wreckage of our Catalina atop the cliff face. Follow the tunnel." She paused. "If you can." A rune changed. "You must get those captured scientists and the research back to Marietta above all else. Do not drop anchor until you are in deep water."
She stood up. "I must go." She turned. "Tell Amelia I love her." The ground shook as Ella jogged over to the captured prisoners, collapsed the stretchers, picking up the heavy weapon on her way, jumped back onto the balcony and left the cavern, up and through the winding escape tunnel and back to the stubby jet and the star-filled sky.
Ella docked with the wings, heard the drop pods latch, got a green icon, and fell off the cliff, launching hard. The radar pinged and Ella plotted a course for the longships as another rune clicked down as Ella broke the sound barrier, finding Hellsbaene at the rendezvous point, this time slamming to a complete stop, hovering aft of the Viking ship and the astounded crew, her wings softly flapping, before softly landing on the longship, rocking it.
"Magnus? Magnus? There you are. There's not much time." She lifted her arm and pointed in the direction of the stronghold. "Make your way there and offer any assistance you can. Your King lives. Original Norse, can you speak it? Do you have any books with you?"
"Ella?" said Magnus, coming forward. "What kind of books? Old Norse? I have my reference journal that I keep with —"
"Great," she said. "May I see it?"
Magnus rummaged around his sack of personal belongings and retrieved a leather-wrapped tome.
"Hold it up in front of me? Fantastic. Can I borrow it? Crap, don't have any spare hands. Could you wedge it in there? Thanks."
The runes changed, blinking red. "Magnus, you must tell Laurie an
d Beowulf when you see them I found a room full of these suits and the key to opening is the pendant Amelia made and —" the last rune turned solid red. The rest of her sentence cut off as her legs tensed then jumped, the jet’s motor igniting mid-jump as the force of her leap pushed Hellsbaene deep down into the water and seawater sloshed over the sides, and her great eagle wings unfolded then swept back. For the second time in a day she left Hellsbaene and her crew wondering what the hell just happened as the sonic boom hit.
The flight path took her back to the high mountain cliff face, into the launch tunnel and along it, back to the room of Norse warriors.
Odin's Warriors.
And their Valkyrie, the mother of all Valkyries, sitting on its throne.
Chapter Ninety-Seven
The Long Way
What remained of the forces alive and still walking, fashioned crude stretchers to carry those who couldn't, those even healed by the floating medical things, carried by the woman in the massive plated armour. General Versetti ordered the second manipular to clear a path to the exit, avoiding the fallen monsters and their deadly spikes, and so the throne room emptied in single file, out the long corridor, and into the light of day for the first time in years.
They passed through each of the nine ring wall gates, snaking down the mountain, past abandoned buildings, and guard posts, completely stripped of life and sound, save for the sound of the burning oil refineries, tasked squads looting every single piece of poison gas canisters and equipment they could carry, or dismantle in a hurry, before returning to the long procession.
At the giant main gate, its twin doors open, the First and Last filed out onto the long, multi-pronged jetties, and onto ships tied at berth, and used them to fetch the adrift ships in the bay.
At the very tail end, covering the retreat, as always, the assault team, lost in their own thoughts. Well most of them. Running on sheer nervous energy, sleep deprived, and the dawning realisation of the horrors that somehow, some way, had crawled from the deepest recesses of their nightmares and become physical, become flesh, real and in a way more terrifying, that daemons were here — and they were real.
Ahead of them, the scientists escorted the three-hundred and twelve Inquisition Marines, the only survivors, their will utterly broken, led by their commander, like the rest, their faces white in shock. General Versetti insisted on taking Reg, and only five others, leaving the rest in Laurie's hands, to do with as he thought fit.
Laurie held out his right hand, and could not keep it still. He gripped it with his left and buried it within the folds of his flight jacket, the sheep's wool lining warm, comforting, even as both hands shook. He wore captured Inka uniforms, like the others, their original clothing destroyed in the fighting, or by the medical attention they’d received. Thank Christ he took the jacket off before the last stand.
Out through the cavern, Laurie ordered his team to pick up any spare mags for the MP 40's and even instructed the penitent squad to gather and keep their own war material. For when those things came back, they'd need them.
They entered the corridor, past the cannon broken in two and the smashed gates and at last into fresh air.
Fresher air, anyway, Laurie thought. Waves of exhaustion rolled over him and he sagged.
"You alright mate?" said Mick, looking up.
"Yeah."
"You look like shit."
"You're not so pretty yourself, sunshine."
"I could murder a beer about now."
"Yeah. Be nice." Right at that moment, Laurie wanted nothing more than a quiet hillside, and the company of Skippy. One man, one dog. He looked around at the courtyard, then stared back down the mountain entrance, and finally, turned to Beowulf, last out of the tunnel. "Come on you lot, let's find Hellsbaene and the others."
Hellsbaene waited at the docks, with the remaining longboats, and a contemplative Merrion, who waved from his own Inka warship, docked next to the Oslo. Heading out into the bay, nine Inquisition ships of the line, the whole First and Last, sails at full mast and running with the prevailing winds, the rear warship commandeered by the general. General Versetti dipped her head at him, then turned her back, but not before signalling Merrion to join them, at which point the lieutenant colonel gave one final wave, and rose anchor.
Laurie tilted his head, glad to be rid of her, that command. Whatever happened in the cavern, whatever test she played, he'd lost.
Or won.
Damn. Bloody hierarchies.
Magnus jumped off the boat, and raced toward them, stopping in front of Beowulf. He caught the words Ella this, Ella that, but the object of his attention lay off to his left. He wandered over to it, and held out a hand. The white aircraft fabric felt cool. The last of the V8’s. Yeah, this would do nicely.
"Lads, we're taking this. Hook this up to Hellsbaene. Scavenge whatever aviation fuel you can find. We're going home. The long way."
Chapter Ninety-Eight
The Voice Of Command
In the utter pitch black, SS Colonel Grieg awoke screaming, and found he could not move an inch. Alien language blared at him, over and over, a warning phase that would not stop. Every fibre of his being, every pore of his skin, erupted in pain.
Grieg thought he was screaming before.
Now, he screamed.
A picture flashed in front of him, blinking red. The outline of a knight’s medieval suit.
Pain. All the pain.
For the first time in his life, Grieg wanted to die.
Outside the power armour, found deep in a cavern centuries earlier, battle-damaged, abandoned, passed down from Emperor to Emperor, the current Emperor of New Spain smiled, and opened the small box of dancing blue. He’d received one final pigeon hawk from his stronghold, the cipher saying just five words: it has fallen to daemons. Very well. So after all this time, the chessboard was nearing its endgame.
Good.
It had been worth it to put the dying, mangled body of the off-worlder into it almost a year ago. An insane, corrupted heathen lifeform deserved another, equally so.
What was even more remarkable, is that over the centuries, inch by inch, the suit had repaired itself, growing new limbs, stumps of new weapons.
And once he’d translated that arcane, Devil-written Norse book, and immersed the suit in seawater, that growth had tripled.
The sphere rose, and in an instant, shot towards the heart of the suit. It activated, as the Emperor spoke fluent, ancient Norse.
The voice of command.
And for now — it obeyed.
Chapter Ninety-Nine
Keep Working
The armoured suit opened with a hiss, blooming outward, and Ella fell out, crawling on both hands and one knee to the edge of the platform and threw up, dry heaving until her stomach hurt too much to take another breath, and rolled onto her back, the stone cold against her bare skin.
What had happened. What just happened. She put her right hand into her mouth and pulled the gauntlet off with her teeth, then the other, hands running over her belly, the stump of her leg, smooth and hairless both. Next to the crude stretcher she'd made, lying on top neatly, was her flight jacket, minus one sleeve.
She hobbled over, and clothed herself, tied a wool blanket around her waist, and teeth clamped together, a little while later, opened Magnus's journal, and with Amelia's letter, got to work, munching on dried fish.
Chapter One Hundred
Through The Looking Glass
Daniel slid the final ground lens into place, standing on tip toes to reach the end of the fourteen-foot long cast-iron telescope. In between the cast iron cylindrical segments, each narrowing in diameter moving back to the viewing eyeport mounted at right angles on the base, brass sleeve rings held the magnifying lenses and light-proofing overlays and the more delicate adjustment mechanisms.
The biggest ever telescope constructed on Elysium pointed directly at the full moon, barely a cloud in the sky.
Even without the brightness of the moon, Da
n thought, the absolute lack of light pollution and smog let the myriad galaxies above dazzle. Especially the Milky Way, and only now after all these months on Elysium, could Daniel look upon it, the galaxy in reverse, and not shiver in, well, the utter wrongness of it all.
General Marietta and Amelia, and the rest of Damage Inc. and by the distant but growing in number revellers climbing up the mountainside, half of Fairholm, had decided to come watch the latest moon-seekers to go mad, still celebrating the Inquisition retreat.
They gathered at the base of the observatory, quite enjoying the festivities of such an auspicious occasion, the first time such an huge scientific undertaking was being undertaken on the planet. At least Marietta was unconvinced by the horror tales. And Lucius. Abe however tried convincing him not to, note after note imploring him to stop.
Daniel heard the tales. Oh boy, had he heard the tales, his ears practically chewed off the moment him and Andrew announced their scientific mission, even by random folks on the street. Men gazing up at the moon, from their own telescopes brought from Earth, or had built for them, gazing up — and suddenly going mad, burning them, smashing them to the ground, becoming jabbering, drooling wrecks for the remainder of their pitiful days. Or becoming utterly catatonic, non-responsive, the lights are on but nobody’s home. Daniel shook his head.
What would primitive, uncultured minds expect otherwise? They were men from the Twentieth Century, not souls right from the Middle Ages with their primitive superstitions.