by Unknown
“Deimos Black, I presume?” the squad leader asked, after we had finished saving his team. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, uncaring of the smear that would invariably leave. It might help the look.
“That’s me,” I told him casually, wisely choosing not to offer my hand. “How is it looking?”
“Pretty much how you see it,” he told me with professional calm. “As soon as we were in range, everything just opened up on us. The majority of her troops were already outside the gate, waiting for us. If you hadn’t dropped the defences, we’d have been torn to pieces.”
We all winced as another Osprey came down not far from us, dropping in a graceless nosedive and immolating the vehicle that had brought it down. Yet another hit the ground in an un-coordinated belly-flop, both engines streaming smoke but not exploding. Yet.
“Quickly, what do we need right now?” I asked hurriedly, all too aware of the lives that hung on how fast this happened.
“The main gate needs to come down, or the APCs defending it need to go. Preferably both.”
“Leave it to me,” I commanded, and pointed to the latest Osprey to fall. “You head to that downed bird and check for survivors. Keep your heads down, got it?”
He nodded to me and immediately got his squad moving, while Lev and I headed towards the gate.
“Hope you got a plan, D,” Lev half-shouted, as more heavy gunfire erupted from the defending vehicles. We both made a dash for a shell-blasted crater, keeping our heads down as the fusillade tore into the ground above us, showering us with dirt.
“Yeah, me too,” I told her idly, chancing a look over the crater edge. “Got any grenades?”
“Nope, not my style.” She brushed flecks of dirt from her hair and clothes, and I gave her what I hoped was a withering glare.
“You prefer style over tactical thinking?”
“Psh, fuck yes. You can’t look this good lugging grenades around, you know.”
I shook my head at her, certain that arguing the topic would not be good for my sanity.
“Fine. Guess it’s time I showed them what the Countess made me into.”
As we’d been flying in, I’d been focussing on my rage, my hatred for Sharriana and my pain at Corvi’s loss. Added to that was the anger at the further losses incurred as we landed, the deaths of the crew and passengers of the Ospreys that were brought down.
And I finally let myself contemplate one other thing, now when I could put the rage to use.
I let myself believe that Tis had been killed.
At that point, I focussed on all of that emotion...and then I let it take over.
I stood up and walked from the crater, projecting my will as a shield once again. One of the vehicles near the gate, a German Marder infantry fighting vehicle, turned its main gun towards me and opened fire. The twenty-millimetre shells sparked against the solid wall of psychic force, buying me the time I needed to focus my will as a weapon.
I held my left hand out in a warding gesture, maintaining the shield as I drew my right hand back, curling it into a fist before punching forwards.
With a sonorous peal of impacted metal the Marder bucked, its entire front end lifting clear of the ground as my psychic blow struck home. It slammed back down a moment later, its gunfire stopped for now as the crew recovered from being thrown around.
I was not about to let them.
I walked steadily towards the vehicle, stretching out both of my hands and twisting them towards each other. As I clawed my fingers, it must have looked like I was trying to pull open an invisible sliding door, but as I moved my hands apart I achieved something far more constructive - with a shriek of tortured metal, the armoured vehicle was ripped in half, the crew inside suffering a similar fate.
Its partner, several feet away on the other side of the gate, turned its weapon towards me and also opened fire. This time I raised my ward with my right hand, and with a gesture from my left threw the front half of the ruined Marder towards the other vehicle.
Several tons of scrap metal smashed into the turret of my target, crushing it completely and causing the ammunition within to detonate.
With those threats removed I walked towards the main gate, using the rage-fire that coursed through me to immolate the soldiers stupid enough to stand in my way.
The gate itself, however, was a different story. Several meters thick and made of solid armoured steel, it was built to withstand almost any assault, barring a direct impact from a battleship’s main gun.
Sadly, I didn’t have any battleships to hand.
“Corvus team, move to my position and provide covering fire,” I said into the radio. “I’m going to open this damned gate.”
Corvus team - the name that Tavoy and his unit had adopted for this fight. All of them were the men and women who had followed Corvi and I to the hunter base, and who had been with me when we liberated our base and found my wife. They took the name to honour her, and I intended to make sure it stuck after this was all finished.
“Corvus team moving to support,” came the clipped response, but by then I was already pouring everything I had into my effort to open the gate.
I stretched out with all of my psychic strength, my hands outstretched as if flat against the armoured gate, and slowly, too slowly, I forced my hands apart.
It felt as if I was moving them physically, instead of with the sheer force of my will. Every muscle in my arms and shoulders burned with agonised effort, blood poured down my face from my eyes and nose as inch by inch, the doors began to part.
I was oblivious to the gunfire that erupted around me, from Lev, Corvus team and the soldiers on the wall, instead focussing all of my strength and fury into forcing the vast gate open.
The steel groaned in protest as I forced it back, stepping forward into the gap and pushing my mental capabilities to breaking point.
With a roar of agony and rage, I gave one immense psychic push, the strongest force I had mustered so far.
Somehow, the gate didn’t open. Instead, both sides of it were ripped free of their housing and hurled forwards, tearing chunks from the walls and pulverising anyone who had been behind it.
I fell to my knees from the effort, barely even hearing the orders over the radio that told everyone to move forwards. With the gate wide open, the defenders were forced to fall back, leaving the way clear for my own people to advance.
Someone threw a captured loyalist to the ground in front of me, and I didn’t even register his panic before I sank my teeth into his throat. I fed hungrily, feeling the strength flow back into my drained limbs, the pain in my head subsiding.
“Feel better?” a familiar voice asked, and I looked at the person who had delivered my meal.
“Shut up, Kelly,” I told her with a smile as she helped me back to my feet. “Get moving, there’ll be time for catching up later.”
Kelly Dumfries saluted smartly, and followed the rest of our troops into the massive courtyard. Already I could see the place filling with defending forces, taking cover behind makeshift barricades and opening fire on us. A series of explosions from the north side of the base, where the airfield was located, told me that Seraph and his people had succeeded in breaching the wall over that way. Just as I was beginning to fear that Mikhail had left us in the lurch, a similar series of explosions tore through the south end of the base. With the barracks and armoury locked down by Mikhail, the defenders would now have nowhere to run, and with Seraph controlling the airfield there was no hope for reinforcements coming in.
“You alright, D?”
I turned to Lev who had stepped up beside me, and I drew both of my swords in reply.
“I’m fine,” I told her, despite sti
ll feeling the vestigial effects of my mental exertion. “Let’s not keep your mother waiting.”
At that I ran into the courtyard, desperate for the end.
CHAPTER 20
Blood and retribution
Inside the courtyard, tactics and strategy were a laughable myth.
With so many soldiers from both sides packed in so close, it became a series of desperate, bloody melees, into which I threw myself without regard for personal safety.
So much of it was fought on instinct, I can barely even recount it here - all I remember was the press of combat, the heat of blood on my face, my blades reaping a bloody toll on anyone who stood against me.
However, I’ll try and put down what I do remember.
I’d lost track of how long I’d been fighting. With little fatigue it was difficult to gauge, but the amount of blood spattered across my body armour and face told me I’d cleaved through maybe four squads. Fresh blood still dripped from my teeth where I’d just fed, and I searched for another fight.
I caught sight of a familiar figure, copper hair catching the dying sunlight, her polearm like a living thing. In peace, Lorelei had a cat’s grace - in combat she was a predator, perfectly evolved for the death of everything she preyed upon.
Except she was getting overwhelmed. Whatever Omega Company support she’d had was obviously dead or separated from her, and her movements were slowing down. Worse, one of the people she now fought was another vampire, and while Lorelei was holding her own, she wouldn’t for long.
I was damned if I was going to let another person I cared about be taken from me, and I pushed my vampiric speed to its limit to get to her.
She’d been beaten down by the time I got to her, her vampire assailant bringing his blade down for a killing strike.
It never connected. He screamed as I took his hand off at the wrist, before stabbing Black Terror through his left thigh. As his leg buckled beneath him I thrust forwards with Crimson Raven, the slender blade slipping easily through his throat and out the other side.
He gurgled something incoherently at me as he began to choke on his own blood, and I wrenched my black blade free to rest it on top of Crimson Raven.
I offered him no final words, I simply sliced outwards with both blades, the scissoring motion carving through his neck with ease.
“Sorry boss,” she said to me in a strained voice, pushing herself slowly into a crouching position. “Kinda got a bit crowded there.”
“What happened to your team?” I asked her, helping her to sit against a nearby barricade.
“Dead, thanks to that bastard,” she said, clenching her teeth in sudden pain. You’ve got to get through, Deimos. We won’t last too much longer if this keeps up.”
“That’s the plan, it’s just getting through that’s the problem.”
“Well, what-whatever you do, trust me...don’t get shot. Or stabbed.”
She moved her hand away from her midriff, exposing the massive wound she’d been clutching. It looked as if her opponent had stabbed her with a short sword and dragged it across, opening half of her stomach.
It wasn’t healing.
“Guess I won’t be wearing any bikinis next summer,” she said breathlessly, and I caught the same strange chemical smell I’d detected around Maria’s body - and Corvi, when we’d found her.
“They’re using that same chemical? How did she get hold of it?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to,” she replied, and winced again. “I’m-I’m bleeding out here, boss. Get going. I won’t ask you for the peace Corvi craved, I’ll...do it myself. Somehow...”
Like hell you are, I thought defiantly, and the anger at the prospect of losing someone else burned hot in my blood.
“This...is going to hurt,” I told her, and before she had chance to stop me I pressed my hand against the wound and focussed.
Her agonised scream was horrific, twisting my heart as I intentionally heated my friend’s blood to intolerable levels. Her veins began to glow beneath her skin with the psychic heat, and I pulled my hand away before I caused any lasting damage.
I prayed it was enough.
“That should purge the chemical from your system,” I told her, trying to keep her conscious. “It’s also cauterised your wounds. Regen might be slow in kicking in, but at least it will now.”
“If...If I live through this,” she gasped, “I...I owe you one.”
“Bollocks do you,” I told her. “You’re my friend, Lori. I’m not letting them take you from me as well.”
“Then...go and...keep your other promise,” she managed, forcing herself to move despite the agony that she must still have felt.
I gave her arm an affectionate squeeze, before throwing myself into the fighting again.
I flowed from combat to combat, never stopping, each Omega Company squad I saved lending their support in cutting through the swathes that stood in my way.
I think at one point I actually saw Lev and Tis, side by side, my sister casually snapping off shots from her assault rifle, Lev firing away with her twinned pistols. They were both laughing.
As I got closer to the main door of the fortress, another vampire appeared from behind a barricade, his blade already rushing towards my chest.
It stopped when it got lodged in the chest of another vampire, who raised his shotgun and blasted my would-be assailant’s head into paste.
“If anyone asks,” Mikhail wheezed to me, “tell them...I was trying to gut you myself.” He paused a moment and coughed, blood dripping from his mouth. “Got a...a reputation to maintain.”
He slumped to the floor, the vicious chemical already working on dismantling his regenerative ability. Chances are he wouldn’t survive much longer, and he wouldn’t tolerate me saving his life. Any longer and either we all died, or Sharriana escaped.
I offered him a nod of thanks, and pressed forward again.
I should have been surprised when I got to the door, but I really wasn’t. The same two vampiric guards I had intimidated before, the two who had escorted me so long before. I never learned their names. I doubted if those two even remembered what they were.
“Oh for fuck’s sake, not you two again,” I offered, sagging in exasperation. Both of them pulled a pair of vicious-looking knives, and grinned wolfishly.
“We seemed to have an issue last time, Mister Black,” one of them told me slowly, and his companion nodded.
“Indeed we did. Seemed you weren’t at all happy with us, and we were only doing our jobs.”
“So we thought-”
“Wow, you two thought?” I taunted. “That must’ve hurt. You sure you don’t need a lie down after that?”
They both growled, and ran at me.
I decided I’d had enough. I slammed my right knee into the stomach of the brute to my left, and immediately snapped it straight again to aim a devastating kick to his companion’s leg. My boot smashed into his knee, splintering the joint and spattering blood over the ground.
As he went down I plunged Black Terror backhanded through my first victim’s back, pivoting in place and taking the second guy’s head off with an upward swing of Crimson Raven, before turning again and taking my first target’s head off as well.
“I don’t have time,” I told their lifeless corpses, and directed a blast of pure psychic force at the door.
The huge piece of oak disintegrated, sending wood slivers and splinters spinning through the receiving room beyond. Several other soldiers were torn apart or incapacitated by the flying wood debris - the rest actually set their weapons on the ground, kneeled down and put their hands behind their heads.
“Don’t kill us sir,” o
ne of them pleaded. “We just...we don’t want to die.”
“I’m not in the habit of murder,” I told them, and I wasn’t. Not yet. “However, if one of you has a vein to offer, I’d appreciate it.”
The one who had spoken stood, his comrades not bothering to look at me. He pulled his sleeve up and offered his arm to me, and I took hold of it gratefully.
But I didn’t feed until I had heated his blood too. I’m not stupid.
His agonised cried still echoed around the halls as I fed from his wrist, and I pushed him away roughly once I’d sated my thirst.
“Next time, you might want to use the arm that you didn’t inject yourself in,” I hissed, not bothering to wipe my mouth. “The needle mark kind of gives the game away.”
I moved to the foot of the stairs, ignoring members of my own people moving in to secure our prisoners.
“Sharriana!” I bellowed, certain she could hear me. “I am coming for you!”
I stormed up the stairs as fast as I could go. Anyone who raised a weapon towards me was run through in short order - I was not going to waste time in any more protracted fights.
Eventually I came to the door to Sharriana’s office, guarded by her aide, Markus.
The muscular, fair-haired man simply looked at me, hands resting on the hilt of his immense two-handed sword, the point resting against the stone floor.
“Not particularly practical for a narrow corridor, is it?” I asked him conversationally, and he shook his head.
“No, I must admit you have a point there,” he said, his tone equally light.
“Are you going to try and stop me?”
Another shake of his head.
“I have concluded many things, of late,” he told me. “One, standing in your way is massively unwise if one wishes to continue existing. Two, our leader is no longer suited to her position, and must be stopped. And three, my loyalty is to The Order, not the person who runs it. If our ideals are being corrupted, then something must be done.”