Necromunda - Survival Instinct

by Andy Chambers - (ebook by Undead)

  10: TERMINUS

  Smoke was swirling across the deck. The hazy figures of the Escher were slipping out of view, only outlined by the occasional gun flash as they chased after the last few of Relli’s pit slaves. Donna crouched down beside Tessera disconsolately, feeling her heart grow cold and shrivelled as she watched one of her only friends dying. Three little pieces of metal had pierced her midriff, three insignificant little pieces of metal moving fast enough to rupture organs, shatter bones and cleave arteries. They had tried patching her up as best they could but there was nothing they could do to stop her bleeding internally.

  “So… did you find… what you came for… D’onne?” she said weakly. Blood was dribbling from the corner of her mouth.

  “No, you’re dying for nothing.” Donna’s voice was flat and bitter, angry.

  “Thanks, D’onne,” Tessera smiled up at her beatifically. “That’s been… the story of my life.”

  Donna stripped off a glove and took Tessera’s hand in her own. Her grip was tight, and the skin felt dry and smooth. She knew what Tessera needed to hear.

  “I did what you suggested—I know, I know, but there’s a first time for everything—I asked the gang why they came looking for me. I was so sure you’d put them up to it. Jen set me straight.”

  Tessera nodded and spoke. “I’ve seen it happen before. Someone… survives long enough… gets a… name and there’s always some idiots ready to call them… a messiah.”

  Tessera’s voice was dwindling to a whisper. Donna’s mind searched frantically for an answer, some way to save Tessera, or to go back in time, or to change reality to fit with the way it should really be. It made no difference, Tessera’s heart continued to pump blood relentlessly into the gaping holes that had been torn in her body cavity. In the end, all Donna could do was say how she felt and hope reality would somehow deign to take notice.

  “I don’t want you to die, Tessera.”

  “It’s alright… I do… I’m too old for this game now… everything hurts… Jen’s ready to take on the gang.

  “Dammit, Tessera, I still need you!”

  “D’onne, hush… you don’t need anyone any more… never did really…”

  Donna’s heart pulsed suddenly as her brain spat out an answer: Ko’iron’s medicae unit! There was nothing they couldn’t fix, or at least stabilise long enough to get fixed. Donna’s words came out in a headlong rush, tripping over each other. “Look, just hold on. I know how I can save you, if I can find Ko’iron—he’s got a medicae unit. One way or another I’ll get it and bring it back. Just don’t die!”

  “You’re… mad… D’onne.”

  The grip on Tessera’s hand tightened momentarily and then Mad Donna was gone.

  Donna quickly clambered her way back up onto the gun deck. She chafed at the need for caution as she slunk forward; Tessera lay dying below her and she didn’t have time to waste slinking about. She kept telling herself that she couldn’t afford to get pegged by some passing gunman now, and a headlong rush would just make her real dead real quick.

  Smoke was drifting everywhere, backlit by the orange glow of flames in the wreckage here and there. It sounded like there was a spirited firefight taking place around the U-shaped deck below, but the gun deck she was on and the stairs that led up to the bridge seemed deserted. No sign of the gunmen that had driven her off earlier. She found that faintly disturbing. They’d had a good position—why give it up?

  Donna heard a creak close behind her and spun around in an eye blink. Tola and Avignon were hauling themselves over the railing behind her.

  “Figured you wouldn’t mind some company,” Avignon stage-whispered. Tola giggled.

  “You two idiots better not get in my way,” Donna said, though in truth she was glad of the back-up.

  “No sweat—ladies first,” Avignon smirked.

  “Humph. What’s all the shooting about?”

  “Jen reckons we’ve got Bak’s little Delaque friends pinned down in the front bit of the boat. She sent us up here to see if we can get an angle on them.” Avignon patted her well-worn autogun meaningfully.

  “Alright then. There were two at least up in the bridge with autoguns. I don’t know whether they’ve gone or are just waiting for good shots. Cover me and we’ll find out.”

  Donna ran, zigzagging between scattered wreckage and body parts. The eviscerated, half-burned corpse of the Dog Soldier she had fought stared up at her accusingly as she passed. She was gambling again, working the theory that Relli had dragged Ko’iron and the servitor away to the bridge. She was also gambling that autofire couldn’t cut her down if she ran fast enough.

  She threw herself to the side as muzzle flashes stabbed out from the bridge. Bullets lashed the deck behind her like hail. Avignon’s autogun chattered out and elicited a cry of pain in response. Donna rolled, covering the bridge with her laspistol, scanning for a target.

  She heard Tola running forward and saw a flicker of movement as one of the gunmen raised his rifle to the railing. Her las-bolts slammed into his head at the same instant that he pulled the trigger on Tola. The burst sprayed wildly around the deck, and the gunman’s finger clamped in a death grip as he toppled out of sight. Tola shrieked.

  “Check on her, Avignon!” Donna called as she sprinted for the steps. She hugged the wall and slithered quietly up while trying to look in all directions at once. She peeked over the edge at the top and saw the gunman sprawled nearby with a scatter of spent shell casings around him. His head was a gory ruin but the long coat and pale skin told her all she needed to know. She’d found the Delaque.

  The Delaque Avignon had hit was wounded and trying to crawl away. Donna scanned the open deck she could see at the top of the steps for more enemies. It was bordered along one side by the bridge itself, but there was a long run of windows and doors that could conceal an army of lurking foes.

  “Tola’s okay, down but not out!” Avignon called from below.

  Donna cleared the top of the steps and skipped along sideways facing the bridge. No lights were showing inside, no signs of movement. The wounded Delaque saw her coming and scrabbled for a pistol at his belt. She closed on him in a couple of long strides and easily kicked it out of his grasp.

  “Ahh, you bitch,” he hissed. “Just kill me and get on with it.”

  “You’re forgetting something, slick. That’s ‘psycho-bitch’ to you,” Donna hissed. “Where’s Bak and Relli? I swear if you don’t tell me quick you’re going to regret it for the rest of your very short and very painful existence.”

  The Delaque squirmed. He knew Mad Donna’s reputation as well as any.

  “He’s—” the world exploded into gunfire and an avalanche of shattering glass. Donna instinctively dived behind the injured Delaque for cover. She felt his body jerk as bullets ploughed into it. The deafening salvo seemed to go on endlessly: breaking glass, bullets whining past, ricochets pinging off metal. A tiny corner of her brain registered Avignon shouting somewhere in the distance.

  The firing stuttered and died away, leaving Donna with the whiff of gun smoke in her nostrils and pounding eardrums. A familiar voice cut through the sudden silence.

  “Glad you could make it, Donna, I really am.” Bak’s sinister whisper was obscenely triumphant. “You’ve been everything I had hoped for—a distraction, an assassin, a saboteur. I couldn’t have wished for a better partner!”

  “Well then, come out here, partner!” Donna called back. “I want to renegotiate some of our business arrangements.” Donna was scanning the bridge, looking for the shooters, but all she could see was darkness and shards of glass hanging from their frames like broken teeth.

  “Oh, I find them eminently suitable for our current relationship,” Bak sniggered.

  “I was thinking of something more like that arrangement I had with Cousin Kell, you know? The one where you die screaming and cursing the day you ever heard my name.”

  “Oh you poor Ulanti bitch, you think you can bait me over Kell? He w
as as useless as he was stupid, that’s why I put him in Dust Falls to draw you on in the first place.”

  “Nice story, Shallej. Is that why you sent men into the sewers after me? To ‘draw me on?’ How many died Shallej? Half of them? All of them? And what about Dead Man’s Hole? How many more did you lose there? You know something, Shallej? I think you’re a crap leader. I think the only way you stay in charge is by killing off anyone that’s better than you, which isn’t asking a lot.” Donna figured there was no harm in trying to sow a little dissension in the ranks. Something she said must have stung Shallej. His voice was pure venom when he replied.

  “You think what you want! Tell it to the sumpsharks!”

  She heard him saying something to the men with him. It sounded like, “It’s done, let’s go”. That was worrying.

  Donna felt a vibration run through the deck. A high-pitched whine began, coughed out and then restarted. It was picked up and repeated, once, twice, rising in volume each time: three, four, five, six more times. Donna realised the noise was coming from either side of the bridge, so she glanced outwards and saw a sight that froze her heart.

  Each of the stub wings to either side of the bridge bore the squat shapes of three big engines. She had given them no heed until now, assuming them to be empty husks. As she watched, the engines opened up like flowers. Venturis extended seamlessly and lit with cherry red flames. The engines built up to full power in a rising howl. The ekranoplan lurched and began to slide forward from the dock.

  “Take Tola and get out of here, now!” she yelled down to Avignon, not even knowing if she could be heard over the roar of the engines. She heard a fusillade of shots crackling up from the lower decks, Jen was doubtless finding out that the Delaque weren’t as pinned down as she’d hoped.

  Donna jumped up, charging headlong for the bridge. Muzzle flashes lit like stars in the darkness, driving her back into cover again. She fired back blindly but the flashes were moving targets. Bak’s men were pulling out.

  Time was running out, and that made Donna more reckless than ever. She dived headlong through a shattered window, tearing her flesh on the knife-like shards. She landed on a table in the darkness and slid awkwardly off it as the ekranoplan lurched. Shots buzzed past her like a swarm of angry insects. Rolling upright, she saw a Delaque silhouetted in a doorway. Donna put two las-shots into his torso and he fell back out of sight.

  The firing stopped abruptly. The room was empty. With her bionic eye’s crystal vision Donna could see that she was in some kind of chartroom, with a corridor running forward to the bridge proper and doors off at either side. She was starting for the doorway where she had shot the Delaque when a sudden chill at the back of her neck made her spin around.

  The room was empty. Nothing moved. The Delaque had all gone. But even now she felt as if something was creeping up on her, something she could see just out of the corner of her eye, but when she looked directly it was gone. The chill feeling at the back of her neck didn’t go away. If anything it intensified.

  But time was running out and she didn’t have time for mysteries. The roar of the engines had steadied and the ekranoplan was wallowing and lurching against its mooring lines like an unruly pack animal. Donna heard the whip-crack sound of a line snapping. Soon the ekranoplan would be heading off into the sump for its final voyage. The room was empty. Nothing moved. She turned back to the doorway.

  Something hit her from behind with the force of a sledgehammer and sent her flying. She crashed into a cabinet and fell to the deck. She glimpsed a glitter of chrome hurtling towards her and she lashed out with a blind kick at it. Her boot connected solidly enough to deflect steel-pistoned jaws driving at her throat, but the enforcer hound behind them kept coming. Blade-sheathed claws raked at her legs as it lunged at her again with its jaws snapping.

  Donna swung Seventy-six up but it was too close for the blade to connect. She punched the cyber-mastiff’s gargoyle-like head aside with the knuckle guard instead. That bought her another second of life. The beast reared back and Donna rolled from beneath it. She was up and onto one knee before it came ravening back at her again. This time her chainblade parry connected squarely, gouging at the polished steel of the mastiffs exoskeleton. Donna took a return cut at the mastiffs foreleg and sent it skittering backwards with a shower of sparks.

  It looked like a spectacular hit but Donna wasn’t fooled. Any ordinary creature would be shorter by a leg after a blow like that; the enforcer hound barely even slowed down. It dug its claws into the deck and jumped at her. This time Donna darted aside and let the heavy cyborg crash into the cabinet behind her. In the second it took for the mastiff to shake itself free of the wreckage, she darted out of the door.

  The door was metal and it was heavy, more of a hatch. Donna threw her weight against it and it swung ponderously shut. She glimpsed the polished metal of the mastiff’s skeleton through the closing gap. Then the door jammed only partway shut, and Donna looked down and cursed. The dead Delaque’s foot was caught in the doorjamb, and the mastiff crashed against the door. Donna had to fight tooth and claw to keep it from being forced open. Tortured metal shrieked in protest, and the mastiffs muzzle and claws scrabbled in the gap with a whining of servos.

  The assault ceased for a moment and Donna instantly thumbed Seventy-six into life. The whirling teeth licked downward through the dead Delaque’s ankle and severed it with a spray of blood. Donna threw the door shut in the mastiffs face. Panting and shaking, she glanced down the steps at her side and then out of the small porthole in the door. The mastiff was close by, staring back at her. Now there was another figure in the room with it, one that sent an involuntary chill down Donna’s spine. A robed figure, one she had seen what seemed an eternity ago at Cliff Wall—short and rotund-looking, it was swaying as if in time to unheard music. The robe’s hood had been cast back to reveal a pale, round face framed by tangled black locks. It was a homely looking face, suited for a nursemaid or a cook, apart from a pair of eyes that twinkled with ages-old malice.

  An icy sensation brushed through Donna’s skull as she looked at the woman. A bloom of frost appeared on the glass of the porthole and stretched feathery fingers across it. The chilling sensation swelled, becoming cold spears inside her head that stabbed down her spine. The world pitched and darkened before her sight, consciousness dwindling into a shrinking spot of light.

  She had failed everyone: Tessera, Tola, Avignon, Hanno, Jen, Lars. Their faces reared out of the darkness at her. They flowed past her in a vivid parade of accusation and disappointment. She had led them all into pain and suffering. Everyone she had ever met had been hurt by knowing her. It would have been better if she had never been born, better if her life were ended now to stop the damage she was doing to everyone and everything around her.

  Her head throbbed abominably. Everything went black.

  Dead leaves rustled above her like dry hands. A chill wind caressed her bare back and arms. The arboretum was covered in a light dusting of frost that caught thin polarised rays of light coming through the skylights high above. Blood was on her hands. Her heart hammered in her chest. She would be found soon. She would be caught and taken back to the tower. Imprisoned for life.

  Nobles and their entourages strolled past. Harassed nursemaids shepherded children in unruly flocks. Their faces turned minutely away whenever they came close to her, denying her existence within their ordered world. She could almost hear their thoughts: a girl alone in the Arboretum? Scandalous! She must be insane! But not a word was spoken, not a glance was given. Her solitude remained perfect and unchallenged.

  Their movements reminded D’onne of the slow, formal dances her father had insisted she learn, of masquerades where nobility stepped and fought their internal battles of supremacy with gestures and nuances almost too subtle to register. A wave of hopelessness surged through her. She felt hollow, spent, an empty shell filled only by the beating, skipping tremor of her heart.

  A shadow fell across her. She looked up
into the furious face of her father and her fluttering heart broke.

  Loqui’s open mouth was screaming but the banshee winds snatched the pitiful sound away and tore it apart. Her night robes billowed wildly about her like torn wings, she was spinning, flailing wildly as she flew up into storm-wracked skies. Streamers of cloud whipped past like predatory shoals and arcs of lightning scored the swollen, bruised atmosphere with bright metallic fractures from horizon to horizon. Loqui was swept further out from the creaking spire and started to fall towards the roiling cloud base far, far below. Despite the patent absurdity of it, D’onne believed she could hear her sister’s thin, distant scream long after she disappeared from sight.

  Her eldest sister, Corundra, was smiling down at her with full red lips. Her face flickered in and out of the darkness, the actinic glare of the lightning distorting it into a hundred cruel masks. Little D’onne felt herself being lifted by small hands and carried over to the edge of the esplanade. Lightning crashed down about them as they reached the railing.

  Count Ko’iron’s sweaty face leered up close to hers. His hand was gripping her by the throat and he was forcing her onto the table. Her back was bowed back cruelly against the table edge. Crystal goblets scattered and broke with a hysterical tinkling sound. But there was no one there. No one would come to help. She was alone with a predator in her home.

  Donna knew what came next. She didn’t want to see this, she’d hidden this deeply a long time ago, so deep that even she didn’t see it any more. Why? Why was this memory here?

  Ko’iron laughed and raised a bottle to his lips, easily keeping young D’onne pinned with his other hand. He knew his business when it came to forcing himself on women, and making them feel helpless while he did it. She writhed in his grasp, only exciting him further. He pressed his slobbering lips against hers, his waxed moustachios scraping rapaciously at her soft skin and the reek of alcohol gusting into D’onne’s nose and mouth.