Exiles in Arms: Night of the Necrotech

by Werner, C. L.

  “At least they’re headed away from us,” Taryn said. Immediately, she appreciated the importance of that fact. “Morrow preserve us,” she gasped.

  The mobile bombs were creeping away because they were moving toward the Scrapyard’s supporting wall. If they detonated there with anything like the same force as the first bomb, the whole place would collapse. Small wonder then that the necrotech had withdrawn the other Deathripper. Why worry about the opening when it planned to demolish the entire building before anyone could reach it.

  Suddenly, from beside the two mercenaries, a cacophony of grinding gears and escaping steam sounded. They turned their heads in time to see Rex lurch up from the ground, dragging the Deathripper up with it. The bonejack flailed and thrashed in the Toro’s hold, struggling to free itself of the metal giant’s grip.

  “Rutger, what is it doing?” Taryn asked as Rex carried the bonejack away from the wall.

  “I’m not sure,” Rutger said, just as startled by the ’jack’s actions.

  Rex took two more lumbering steps, then rotated its body to face the crawling scrap thralls. Smoke belched from the warjack’s stack as its steam engine strained to provide the power demanded by the effort ahead. Voicing an almost bestial growl, Rex hurled the bonejack at the scrap thralls. The explosion as the Deathripper slammed down into what had been Bruno’s leg shook the entire Scrapyard, sending beams and girders plummeting from the roof. The other scrap thralls vanished, caught in the premature detonation. A fog of dust and debris billowed through the arena, blinding and choking those who hadn’t yet fled.

  Gagging and coughing, Taryn stumbled out into the dry dock. As soon as she was in the open, she wiped the dust from her eyes, drew down her goggles, and started back. But the sight of a certain dirt-covered Cygnaran sell-sword stumbling out from the ruins changed her mind. She rushed over to Rutger, leading her stunned partner toward the slightly less noxious air by the channel.

  “That was noisy, but it worked,” Taryn said once they were clear of the old dry dock. She frowned as she noted all the people swimming in the filthy water of the channel, striking out in every direction. Already, she could hear alarm bells sounding all across Southhold Prow. Even in such a dilapidated district, hundreds of terrified people flinging themselves into the channel and an explosion that could have rattled the teeth in the lord governor’s statue was going to draw attention. She wondered how long it would be before the watch were swarming all over the place.

  “I don’t understand it,” Rutger said, shaking his head. “I didn’t tell him to do anything.”

  Taryn knew she should be sympathetic to her partner’s distress, but at the moment she was more concerned about the watch showing up, or some leftover Cryxian horror crawling out of the Scrapyard. “Your warjack probably just saw the chance to do a lot of property damage,” she said.

  “No, he saved us,” Rutger said. “I didn’t know what to do, but he did.”

  Taryn laughed. A steamjack might be capable of some rudimentary initiative, but to believe it capable of having its own ideas and making its own decisions was nothing short of absurd.

  She heard something stomping through the dry dock. Something big. She spun around, magelocks drawn. Rutger heard it too, pulling his hand cannon from its holster as he rose to his feet. Both of them had the same idea. The missing Deathripper.

  When the source of the sound rounded the corner, Taryn rolled her eyes in disgust. The delighted cry that Rutger made didn’t help her attitude.

  “Rex!” he shouted, rushing over to the dust-covered behemoth, inspecting it for any critical damage.

  “Check it for dents later,” Taryn said, looking anxiously back at the Scrapyard. “Let’s beat it before anything else comes strolling out of there.”

  Rifles barked, riddling the cadaverous monster with bullets. Despite the havoc inflicted upon it, the undead horror still managed to limp toward the watchmen, dragging its broken arm and the dead weight of the huge gauntlet bolted to it. Before the militiamen could fire another salvo into the crippled mechanithrall, their commander stepped out from the firing line, raised his pistol, and sent a bullet smashing through the abomination’s skull. The ghoulish light shining from its sockets faded as it pitched down the stairs.

  “Recover and advance!” the bull-necked lieutenant ordered, not quite hiding the tremor of fear in his voice. The clatter of riflemen reloading their weapons sounded as they slowly mounted the stairs. To many of the denizens in Five Fingers, the watch was simply a corrupt, ill-trained rabble, little better than the gangs they were supposed to suppress. Not so for Lieutenant Emil Trask. The pride he took in the quality of the men under his command was the very core of his existence. Even in the face of something as monstrous and terrifying as an open attack by the Nightmare Empire in the middle of the city wasn’t enough to make them forget discipline and drill. Every day, he gave thanks to Ascendant Markus that he’d been given the chance to serve a man like Captain Nestor Parvolo. He could hear the officer’s voice barking out orders below.

  “Carry on, Sergeant,” Trask told his own subordinate before descending to the arcade. He tried not to pay too much attention to the bodies stacked against the walls of the stairwell, feeling sweat bead in his palms as he caught horrible glimpses from the corner of his eye. The handiwork of Cryx was almost as ghastly as the monsters they crafted with their obscene magic.

  Trask found Parvolo interrogating a shivering survivor. He knew the routine, the questions that would be asked, the dull half-coherent answers that would follow. There were few who could understand the strange motivations that moved the fiends of Cryx, and even fewer who would want to. The idea that these abominations could strike at will in Five Fingers was hideous enough to occupy Trask’s nightmares for years.

  With a weary shake of his head, Captain Parvolo dismissed the terrified man, entrusting him to a constable’s care. All night they’d been ferreting out survivors from dark corners and hidden crawlspaces. Taken in concert with the refugees they’d found cowering throughout Southhold Prow or fished from the channel, there had to be upward of a hundred witnesses Parvolo could draw upon to try and make sense of what had happened here.

  “We’ve finished clearing out the thralls on the fourth tier,” Trask said, almost managing to mask the tremble in his voice. “I think those might be the last.”

  “Don’t let your guard down,” Parvolo said. “With these horrors, you have to kill them twice and call a priest to check your work when you’re done.” He glanced at the ceiling as gunfire thundered from overhead. “How are the men holding up?”

  Trask repressed a shudder. “Better than might be expected. This isn’t like clearing out a nest of Waernuk’s smugglers or breaking one of Hurley’s extortion rings.”

  “I know,” Parvolo said, slamming his fist into his palm. “But it has to be done.”

  “The men know that,” Trask told his commander. “They have your example to thank for that, sir. You’ve shown them that duty is more than just something you sell to the highest bidder.”

  “There are too many who think it is,” Parvolo said. He didn’t need to mention names, not with Trask. Not with any of his officers. They knew the other captains were bought and paid for, as was Commander Middleton. Parvolo was a lone bastion of incorruptibility in a sea of bribery, nepotism, and graft.

  Parvolo looked across the scarred floor below the spectator platforms. “This was one of Volkenrath’s places.” It wasn’t a question. With less than one watchman for every two hundred inhabitants, there were entire districts in Five Fingers that were simply dead zones as far as the law was concerned. Most of Hospice Island was such a place. So long as nobody important was molested, the high captains and their underlings were permitted to do as they liked. It took something truly monumental to bring the watch into the lawless hinterlands.

  Cryxian creatures in the city was about as monumental an incident as anyone could ask for.

  “It’s a nightmare,” Parvolo said,
staring down at the rows of bodies stacked across the floor. “I don’t even know how I’m going to make a report to the lord governor. I’m not even sure where to start.” The captain looked back at Trask and favored him with a bitter smile. “I do know where to start. Those ‘heroes’ the survivors have been talking about, the ones who kept this place from becoming even more of a slaughterhouse than it is. I don’t care how we do it, but I want them found.”

  Trask shuddered as an agonized shriek sounded from above. An instant later the roar of rifles drowned out the echoing scream. The lieutenant wondered what his men had found and who had been the watchman unfortunate enough to find it.

  “We’ll track them down, rest assured,” Trask said. “After cleaning out these monsters all night, anything else will be easy.”

  CHAPTER V

  An oily, evil quality clung to the air within the subterranean passage. Lorca prided himself on being a practical man, not prone to superstition or imagination. He believed in cause and effect, in what he could see and hold. Yet as he walked through the dank, murky tunnel, even he could sense the wrongness of the place. Necrotite, alchemists claimed, was something like coal that had been exposed to malignant spiritual influences for prolonged periods. It only had to be processed and refined in order to become usable. The vibrations of all violence and cruelty lingered long after the deeds themselves. It seeped into the very earth, percolating down into rock and stone. Given enough time and the right conditions, that evil could be harnessed as necrotite.

  Lorca wasn’t sure how much of the alchemical theory he believed. What he did believe was that necrotite was a valuable commodity, better than its weight in gold if only someone had the nerve to exploit it.

  Luck, he’d always maintained, was something only fools put any trust in. Yet Lorca had to admit it was chance that brought him knowledge of a necrotite vein beneath Five Fingers. If Habber were a better gambler, the discovery would never have fallen into Lorca’s lap. Owing two thousand crowns in one of Volkenrath’s places had put the smuggler firmly under the gangster’s thumb.

  If Habber were better at his chosen profession, he’d never have resorted to hiding contraband here, a place even an impious murderer like Lorca would have thought twice before defiling. Poor Habber. He never appreciated what he’d found. Lorca imagined the first inkling the smuggler had of the true value of his discovery was when he tried to use it to pay off his gambling debts. There had been an almost absurd look of shock on his face when Lorca slid the dagger between his ribs.

  Unlike the smuggler, Lorca knew what he had. He knew what he could get with it, the one thing more valuable than money.

  Thinking of his ambition brought a scowl to Lorca’s face. His arrangement with Azaam and Moritat represented a great investment of resources, not to mention risk. Colluding with the Nightmare Empire was serious business across all the Iron Kingdoms. If he were caught, no amount of gold could save him from the gibbet.

  There was a brooding anger in Lorca’s step as he emerged from the tunnel into the underground grotto. Somewhere above his head were the forgotten vaults of an Orgoth torture theatre, ancient cells where the barbaric invaders had visited their inhuman cruelties upon the people of western Immoren. The essence of those cruelties had seeped into the ground below, maturing over the centuries into the glistening black ore Lorca could see embedded in the cavern walls.

  The timber casings of mining ribs and the steely frames of mud pumps were scattered throughout the cavern, along with stacks of reinforcement beams, boxes of digging tools, crates of boring equipment, and the sprawling mass of a shale shaker to clean the necrotite ore. Moritat had extolled this vein as the richest he’d ever encountered. All of this was a physical manifestation of Lorca’s investment.

  Now he expected a return on that investment.

  Something stirred from the shadows. Lorca couldn’t say if the thing stepped out of the darkness or simply manifested in the glow of his lantern. Either way, it appeared with supernatural silence and abruptness. It was a withered, fleshless phantom, only the last patches of shriveled flesh clinging to its exposed bones, a few wisps of faded hair hovering about its skull. The specter was shrouded in the decaying cloak and doublet of centuries past, golden buckles and brocade lost beneath layers of tarnish and corrosion. The apparition’s bony arms were crossed against its chest. In each skeletal talon, it gripped a massive and archaic pistol. The iron barrels of each weapon were elaborately engraved with magical symbols.

  Lorca forced himself to stare into the ghostly eyes of the phantom sentinel and ignore the terror its presence sent through his flesh. “I’ve come to see your master,” he said. The wraith studied him with its corpse-fire eyes, the only trace of animation in its deathly shape. After a moment, with the same suddenness of its appearance, the ghost was gone, withdrawn back into the darkness.

  The gangster hastened onward lest the ghoulish guard return.

  The sputtering light of steam-powered illuminators and the sickly glow of alchemical lamps revealed the presence of Lorca’s fearsome allies. With the authorities swarming over Southhold Prow, they’d been forced to abandon the warehouse hideout, relocating to the cavernous necrotite mine. Even through the fire of his anger, he felt the frigid clutch of fear as he watched the Cryxians at their labors.

  Azaam’s attentions were devoted to the decaying husk of something that had once been human. Piled on the floor beside her was a heap of entrails and organs. Her knives were caked in gore and filth. Obscene runes and animation glyphs defaced the mangled body, each symbol exhibiting the same sanguine gleam Lorca had noted before, blood dripping from each scar as though pumped into it by a still-living heart. Clustered around the blood hag, silent and indifferent to her butchery, lay rank upon rank of the grisly risen. Some already bore the attentions of her blade across their rotting bodies; others appeared new and unmarked.

  “Repurposing our workforce.” Moritat’s slobbering voice echoed through the cavern. The necrotech was scurrying about a broad slab of stone. Whether it was meant as a table or an altar, whether the remains strewn about it were meant as an offering or simply the raw materials for one of the monster’s creations Lorca was unable to tell. All he did know was that the sight of the spidery necrotech pawing at the butchered remnants, picking and probing at them with tiny knives and crooked saws was the most sickening thing he’d ever seen.

  Moritat chuckled as Lorca hurriedly turned his back. “I felt that certain adjustments would make my creations more efficient. Better capable of undertaking their new duties.” The necrotech paused and fixed his grisly gaze on Lorca.

  The metal legs of the necrotech’s armature clattered across the floor as he moved toward Lorca. Moritat reached out with a necrotic hand, his decayed face gleaming with fascination, then sighed as the gangster cringed away. “The frailties of flesh,” he said. “How the living do cling to their weaknesses.”

  Lorca bristled at the necrotech’s condescending tone. “I’m not the one who’s weak,” he said. “Your attack failed! You massacred scores of people, practically demolished the Scrapyard . . .”

  “All according to the plan you agreed to,” Moritat said, a trace of ironic humor in his voice. “You wanted everyone to know it was nothing mortal behind the attack, for no one to consider that you might be involved.”

  “But the attack failed!” Lorca’s fury poured fire into his nerves. “Volkenrath escaped! You didn’t kill him! All you’ve done is make the whole city go wild with panic. The watch has sealed off the bridges to Hospice, the Ordic Navy is trying to inspect every ship coming or going from the island. The high captains have even set aside their differences to help look for you. Riordan has his men scouring any place two Scharde have been seen together. Hurley has his enforcers roughing up every pirate rumored to have set foot in Cryx. Waernuk’s sealed off the Wake Islands and has almost his entire syndicate checking for even the slightest sniff of Cryxian entanglements.”

  Moritat grinned. “Some people
should be careful what they look for. They just might find it.” The necrotech settled back on his metal armature, adopting a contemplative look as he considered the humor in Waernuk looking for agents of the Nightmare Empire. It was a good joke, good enough that he thought he might let Lorca share in it. But he set aside the notion. If he did that, he’d have to kill the gangster, and he still needed Lorca alive. At least for a little longer.

  “The high captains are putting real pressure on everyone,” Lorca said. “The law and the gangs are hounding the city trying to find you and eliminate what everyone thinks is a Cryxian intrusion.”

  “Was that not your plan?” Azaam said, turning away from her work. “To draw attention away from yourself. To use the great terror of Cryx to deceive your enemy about his true peril?” Her tone dropped into a menacing growl. “I wonder how you intended to get us out of the city once the alarm was out.”

  Lorca met the crone’s murderous gaze. “That’s why you still need me,” he said, taking courage from the fact. “I can get you and your necrotite out. It’s already been arranged.” He glanced over the silent ranks of risen and the latest victim of the blood hag’s attentions. “Though it looks like you’ve suspended your mining operations.”

  Moritat scurried across the cavern, his rotten claws caressing one of the undead Azaam had already prepared. “There is a purity in the things we make,” he said. “A purity of purpose not found in the confusion and disorder of mortal flesh. When we build something, it is with a certain task in mind. Change the labor and the laborer too must be changed.” He turned, running his paw down Azaam’s withered cheek. “The blood magic of the Satyxis is a remarkable thing, a marvelous force to be incorporated into the designs of the necromechanikal art. But it is a violent, raw sort of force. Unsuited to, should we say, more domestic purposes?” He dug a ribbon of decayed flesh from the sutures around one of the pipes embedded in his gut, sniffing at it for a moment before tossing it aside and turning back toward Lorca.