Exiles in Arms: Night of the Necrotech

by Werner, C. L.

  The second Scavenger was able to correct the angle of its strike in time, shifting away before it could come within reach of Rutger’s sword. He watched as it soared upward, rendezvousing with the bonejack that had crippled Rex’s arm.

  “We have to break the control that’s guiding them,” Rutger declared.

  Taryn shook her head. “I’ve already put two shots in that squid thing and it’s still going strong.”

  Rutger looked again at their enemies on the other car. This time he noticed the witch shouting at the iron lich. An idea came to him. “That thing isn’t giving the orders. It’s just relaying them.” He laughed bitterly. “I was wrong, it is the witch we need to kill.”

  Taryn looked down at her magelock. Rutger could almost read her mind. She was wondering if her enchantment would be able to overcome the magic the blood hag had used to escape Rutger’s shot earlier.

  “That thing can fly, but I don’t see any wings on the witch,” Rutger said, pointing at the truck connecting the car to the cables above it.

  A cold smile spread over Taryn’s face as she aimed her gun and invoked her spell. “Rot,” she said, and fired. The bullet, propelled with the force of the gun mage’s magic, slashed into the thick steel cables. Two of the lines were almost sheared clean through, and the remaining threads snapped with a sound like the crack of a rifle.

  Across the distance, Rutger saw the horrified look on the witch’s face when she appreciated what was happening. The first cable snapped, and her car lurched violently to one side. She scrabbled for purchase, throwing her arms around the mast. Balefully, she glared at the mercenaries. Before the second cable could snap, she was shrieking orders to the iron lich.

  Then the frayed second cable gave out. The car was thrown onto its side, hanging high above the channel. The strength of the last remaining cable wasn’t enough to hold the car’s weight. With a thunderous boom, it broke, sending the car hurtling into the bay below. As it fell, Rutger thought he saw a misty blot of vaporous blood clinging to the mast. He hoped the witch’s magic was less effective against drowning than it was against bullets.

  Even as the witch vanished from sight, her handiwork was set into motion. The last Scavengers came diving in, and Rutger cried out in horror. The bonejacks were going to return the favor, swooping in to attack the cables and send the car dropping into the channel.

  Rutger shouted at Rex, ordering the ’jack to grab hold of the cables and again arrest the motion of the car. Then he made a desperate climb up the mast to the metal box housing the truck.

  “Are you mad?” Taryn yelled, horror in her eyes as she watched her friend try to fumble his way onto the top of the truck.

  He started to frame an answer, then felt his blood go cold. He’d made a mistake. The Scavengers weren’t diving at the cables. They were diving at the car itself. He remembered the horrible impact the crippled bonejack had caused, how it had nearly thrown them all into the channel. That had been accidental, simply a product of the chaos of battle. This would be much worse.

  “Hold tight!” Rutger shouted as he wrapped his arms and legs around the top of the mast.

  When the Scavengers struck, it was as if the cable car had been struck by a battering ram. The car swung so far out that it was almost completely on its side before its momentum reversed and it came snapping back around. The entire side of the car was smashed in, the carriage reduced to a tangled mess of torn steel. It was a testament to the quality of its construction that it survived at all. The bonejacks had effectively disintegrated under the impact.

  As the car came snapping back around, Rutger heard Taryn scream. His heart leaped into his throat as he saw the gun mage hurtling out into the open sky. The violent shift in the car’s momentum had broken her hold on the mast and flung her off.

  Just as Taryn started to fall, the squid-like ghastliness of the iron lich came diving at her. She shrieked. The thing’s metal tentacles wrapped themselves about her, coiling her body in a crushing embrace.

  “Such pretty flesh,” the left skull said.

  “Much prettier once it’s decayed a bit,” the right skull said. “I must see what this coin looks like with a bit of tarnish.”

  The central skull simply moaned, but there was an inhuman malignance in that wail, the sound of a fiend disgusted with its own existence and determined to make anything that crossed its path share in its pain.

  Taryn’s screams faded as the skull-faced thing went flittering away through the air, undulating across the sky toward the south.

  Rutger wasn’t certain how he maintained his hold on the swaying mast as he watched the iron lich carry off Taryn’s limp, motionless body. He only knew it was by no conscious decision of his own.

  He’d been wrong. The witch hadn’t been guiding or controlling the monster. She’d been restraining it. With her gone, the fiendish machine was set loose to pursue its own murderous proclivities.

  In that instant, he’d have liked nothing better than to fall to his death and make the pain go away.

  “Withdraw!” Captain Parvolo shouted at the launch’s crew. Too many of them had come forward to help the watchmen board the enemy ship and been caught in the worst of the fighting. Those left didn’t seem possessed of the incentive to make decisions for themselves. He grabbed one man close by and pushed him toward the wheelhouse. “Get this barge moving!” he roared. The sailor nodded, but whether that meant he would carry out the order was more than Parvolo could tell.

  The fighting still raged fiercely on deck. The swivel gun had been knocked out by one of the bonejacks that erupted from the channel’s bottom. Parvolo would have given much to know how the ghastly machines had contrived to follow the Majestic underwater, waiting until they were needed. To say that the sudden advent of the monsters had turned Parvolo’s operation into a shambles was an understatement.

  Lieutenant Trask crouched down beside Parvolo, aiming the immense slug gun he’d somehow contrived to get hold of before the raid, which was more like a small cannon than a firearm. Its massive projectile was designed to crack a warjack’s hull. The havoc it inflicted upon the Cryxian machines was tremendous, when it could manage to hit them. Hideously, the easiest time to hit one of the creatures was when they stopped to butcher a man caught in their claws. Trask looked up at his captain, waiting for the signal. Parvolo pointed his finger at a clawed monster over near the aft rail. Parvolo nodded in understanding and fired.

  The slug smashed into the bonejack, splitting its hull and sending a mix of foul oils streaming from ruptured pipes and hoses. The impact pushed the thing through the railing, sending its nightmarish bulk plummeting back into the water.

  Parvolo was thankful that the macabre machines no longer moved with the terrifying unity of purpose and coordination they had displayed earlier. Before, the things would have made a concentrated attack against anyone who displayed the ability to harm them. The man who carried the other slug gun had been slaughtered when two of the bonejacks converged on him. No fewer than four of the things had settled on the swivel gun. It was a mercy the monsters had lost their cohesion. Now they were simply murderous beasts, killing and slaughtering without any thought for others of their kind. It was Parvolo’s first real break since the raid started.

  No, that wasn’t quite true. He couldn’t forget his terror when a flock of flying bonejacks had erupted from the Majestic’s hold. Never in his life had he been more certain of death than as he watched that ghoulish flock circle above the launch.

  But strangely, the threatened attack never came. The Scavengers peeled off suddenly and flew away to the east. It was difficult to be certain with the clamor of battle all around him, but Parvolo thought he’d heard gunshots off in that direction.

  The launch finally got underway, chugging toward shore. The debased sailors on the Majestic continued to fire their weapons at the retreating boat, but at least there would be no more of the risen leaping down from their decks to assist the bonejacks.

  Parvolo glare
d at the enemy ship. He’d wanted to take it intact, to capture one of the Cryxian leaders. There was a connection to Lorca, and he knew it was on that ship. He could feel it in his bones.

  He shook his head. There was no use mourning things that were already lost. Leaning out from the corner of the wheelhouse, the captain cut the rotten arm from a risen charging forward to attack Trask while he reloaded the slug gun. The undead staggered back, worms and putrescence trickling from the stump of its arm. It started to reach down to recover its weapon with the hand still left to it, but a downward sweep of Parvolo’s blade sent its decayed head rolling across the deck.

  The captain looked at the carnage. The deck was awash in gore, bodies piled everywhere. Many of his men were still alive somehow, but many more were strewn about the launch in mangled heaps. Parvolo reached down and grabbed Trask’s shoulder as he started to aim the slug gun at the last of the amphibian bonejacks.

  “Let me do this,” Parvolo said. As he crouched down and aimed the cumbersome weapon, he added, “I need to do this.”

  The roar of the slug gun as Parvolo fired into the bonejack was drowned out by a far more calamitous discharge. At the neck of the channel, the navy warship had loosed its broadside. As soon as Parvolo’s raid ran into trouble, the navy had signaled they were ready to demolish the ship with cannon fire. They’d only been waiting for Parvolo’s launch to break away.

  Having spent the last fifteen minutes calculating the range, the warship was unerringly precise. The Majestic’s rigging was blasted into splinters, her hull pounded to ruins, and her deck smashed into kindling. The first volley reduced the ship to a ragged cripple. Before a second volley could be unleashed, however, the floating wreck was engulfed in a terrific explosion. Ghoulish green light blazed around the ship for an instant, eclipsing even the morning sun in brilliance, and then the Majestic was obliterated in an explosion heard even on the mainland.

  In the aftermath, all that was left of the ship were burning splinters scattered between the shores of Chaser and Captain’s Islands.

  Parvolo looked across the bonejack he’d shot down and gazed upon the annihilated merchantman. He shook his head. If Lorca was behind the Cryxian attack, any evidence of it had been sent to the bottom of the channel.

  The windows in Lorca’s office above the gambling hall rattled in their casings as the detonation of the Majestic shook the island. He couldn’t see out past the Governor’s District to King’s Finger Channel, but the distinct sound of a naval broadside left no doubt what had happened. There was only one ship the navy could be shooting at this morning.

  Lorca leaned back in his chair and raised a glass of wine to the window. “Farewell, Moritat,” he said. “Your inconvenience to me is over.” He laughed as he took a sip. “You should have remembered the old pirate adage: dead men tell no tales.”

  “Dead men have quite a bit to say, if you know how to ask them.” The oozing voice came from behind Lorca. The gangster leaped from his chair, turning to stare in horror at the ghastly thing that had scuttled into his office.

  The necrotech’s bloated body was spattered with blood, the mangled bodies of two of Lorca’s guards dangling from his claws. Moritat chuckled at the look of terror on the gangster’s face. His wide grin split the stitches holding his torn cheek together.

  “No thank you,” Moritat said when he noticed the glass in Lorca’s hand. “I never drink wine. Perhaps these gentlemen?” The necrotech hefted the mutilated corpses, their broken limbs slapping obscenely against the floor. Moritat shrugged and let the bodies drop onto the rug. “Perhaps not,” he said with a tinge of regret.

  “How . . . how . . .” Lorca stammered, backing away.

  “How did I get here?” Moritat said. “Oh, I’ve been here for some time now. As you may have guessed, I decided not to leave on your ship.” He wagged a blood-coated finger. “Very treacherous of you to inform the authorities about that ship.”

  Lorca dropped the glass. “I had nothing to do with that.”

  Moritat’s answer was a slobbering cough. “Another nice thing about asking dead men questions. They never lie to you.” He folded his gore-stained hands across his belly. “But we will forget about that right now. It happens your betrayal has been extremely useful.”

  “Useful?”

  The necrotech nodded excitedly. “Oh yes. Because of you, everyone in Five Fingers thinks we’re dead. You see, that’s why I was so agreeable about being so open and dramatic in those attacks you wanted.” Moritat clapped his hands together. “Get everyone looking for me. Then, when they think they’ve found me they will stop looking. No enemy is so invisible as the one that everybody thinks has already been destroyed.”

  “You can’t kill me,” Lorca said, circling around the desk as Moritat came scuttling toward him. “You still need me to get out of the city. It’ll be easier now that everyone thinks you’re dead. Just like you said.”

  Moritat shook his head, more stitches snapping as he smiled. “I won’t kill you, Lorca. That would be such a waste.

  “I abhor letting interesting subjects go to waste.”

  CHAPTER IX

  The darkest corner in the Ten Kings was a miserable little rat hole where the room made a sudden sharp angle to accommodate the building next door. The ceiling was lower by about two feet, forcing anyone trying to navigate this part of the establishment to bend himself nearly in half, unless he was a dwarf or a gobber. Brandle Wester, never a man to pass up even the most remote chance for profit, had squeezed a table and pair of chairs into the truncated corner against the off chance that a dwarf down on his luck or a gobber who’d taken a head-dive from the rigging might decide to patronize his tavern. Typically, the corner remained empty.

  It was therefore something of a surprise to Brandle when a customer secreted himself at the table under the lowered roof. Not a gobber or dwarf, but a full-grown human. The keeper restrained the curiosity this circumstance provoked, however. One thing a man in his profession quickly learned was discretion. So long as the customer continued to pay for gunshot rum, Brandle was more than happy to let him play hermit in the dingy little corner.

  Rutger tapped his foot impatiently as he sat at the dilapidated table, swilling the pungent mix of black powder and alcohol that Brandle passed off as rum. It was vile-tasting stuff with a burn that made his throat feel raw, not to mention a rotten-egg smell that would turn a farrow sick. He didn’t want anything stronger, though, not when he still had so much to do to find Taryn.

  He’d spent most of the day scouring every dive and gambling den he could find, searching out anybody he could call friend or acquaintance, anyone who either owed him a favor or might be willing to sell him information. He’d even been so bold as to try to strong-arm his way into Lorca’s headquarters, but the watch dragged him off.

  He still didn’t believe the claims of Lorca’s gangsters that their boss wasn’t around. It had taken Lieutenant Trask’s observation that if he let himself get killed by syndicate thugs he’d never find Taryn to quiet Rutger down. When the watch turned him loose, Trask promised to contact him with whatever information they could turn up. He’d agreed to send word that evening to the Ten Kings.

  From his shadowy corner, Rutger stared across the miserable little tavern with its grubby appointments and grubbier clientele. He looked over to the table he had been sharing with Taryn when Marko crept back into their lives with another of his slippery schemes. She’d wanted nothing to do with the thief and even less to do with whatever plan the treacherous weasel had been brewing in his twisted brain. If not for Rutger himself, Taryn would never have become entangled in the chain of events that had led to her death.

  Rutger took another pull from the chipped clay cup, hissing in pain as the rum burned its way to his belly. All his fault, from the very start. Why had they been desperate enough to even listen to Marko? Because Rex had gone berserk and torn up an entire street. Why had the warjack gone crazy? Because Rutger thought he could keep the ’jack’s c
ortex intact and unfazed even after the machine had been in the service of Ariztid Olt, because he didn’t want to lose the experience and initiative of a veteran cortex. After the machine had wreaked havoc, the wanted posters started. There again Rutger’s presence made things worse. The watch’s reward was small enough that it would attract only desperate and inexperienced hunters. But because of who Rutger was, because of his past, one of the deadliest bounty killers in Caen was on their trail. Kalder would have had no interest at all if not for the chance to exact retribution on him.

  That was why Taryn had agreed, despite her loathing and distrust of Marko. She’d seen the fear in Rutger’s eyes when he heard Kalder was looking for him. She knew the only way to help her friend was to make enough money to bribe the watch into rescinding the bounty and thereby stripping Kalder of his hunting license.

  It had been Rutger’s worry, his fight, not hers. That made it all the more painful for him to appreciate that he’d gotten Taryn into the events that followed. The Scrapyard, Vulger’s mansion, and that final, terrible fight over the channel.

  She’d appreciated the dangers of facing the Nightmare Empire better than he did, probably from the start. He was too principled to face reality with the severity it demanded. How many times had Taryn scolded him for bestowing their last half galleon on some poor beggar? How many times had she scolded him for what she called “charity work” simply because he sympathized with the aims and ambitions of an employer? And he would quip that perhaps he was naive, but he still clung to a faith in the powers of good over those of darkness. He told her that evil, no matter how strong, must ever be opposed with courage and determination.

  Rutger smashed his fist against the table, clenching his teeth in impotent rage. Where was Trask? Every minute he wasted, Taryn was in the clutches of those fiends! The image of her plummeting to the channel blazed through his mind. And then that still more hideous memory of the octopus-like monster swooping down, catching her up in its metal coils.