by Nate Crowley
“You are needed in the freight yard, commander,” said Dust, as if chiding a schoolboy late for a class. “Kronos has finally been shipped in, and you will need to oversee the installation of his manufactory feed. I thought we could take the opportunity to review the placement of the heavy battery on the way.”
“Yes, general,” said Mouana in the most ordinary register, as if there was nothing unusual about the situation, although every muscle in her body was tensed.
“Very good,” answered Dust with a nod, before turning back to the entrance corridor without so much as a glance at Aroha. As she left to follow, Mouana locked eyes with the older man for the briefest moment, long enough to convey that they would never, ever resume the conversation they had been having.
There was silence as Mouana followed Dust down the corridor, melting gradually into the clamour of the unfolding siege as they stepped out into daylight.
“It was roach meal, you know,” mused Dust, looking up as a heavy lifter rumbled overhead with a railgun strapped to its belly.
“Roach meal, sir?”
“Not crickets,” said the general, peering at her. “Those were for feast days. Roach meal was the main component of the daily ration. And cave mold, yes. But not sawdust either. There were no trees.”
Mouana was stunned; her mouth flapped like a landed fish and her heart fluttered. It took all her composure to force out a sound. “Sir, he’s a good soldier, and—”
“Minor details, commander,” said Dust, with the ghost of a smile. “I’m not going to hang him over a confusion of insects, am I? Now, we have a battery to see to. Walk with me.” The general turned and moved away down the trench, and Mouana followed on shaking legs.
They had gotten away with it. Mouana knew that they had. But as the sky deepened to the colour of wine and the general’s form began to twist like a knot of worms, the relief drained, and Mouana recognised with sick familiarity that the memory was changing.
Dust turned back to her and her face dissolved into oily smoke, no longer distinguishable from the darkening sky. Only her eyes remained, simmering like the coals of a forge as they swam closer to her.
“I will forgive a lot,” they growled, as the rest of the world became black. “But not betrayal, Mouana. And not theft. You have stolen from me, and I am coming to take what is mine.”
The words rose to a shriek, and the general’s eyes surged forward. Mouana thrashed and tried to claw her way from the false memory, but knew she could not leave. Not until the blade came. And there it was, plunging at her chest, its final thrust seeming to slow to a crawl as the tip pierced her skin.
MOUANA SCREAMED, AND a hundred firelit faces stared at her in shock. She was back on the quarterdeck of Gunakadeit, and looking out over what appeared to be a party. The hatch over the hold had been bolted and a great firebowl set up, over which birds were roasting on skewers.
Around the fire, rebels and dead folk stood stunned by her outburst, stories dying on their tongues. A set of bagpipes wheezed to a low moan, and there was an embarrassed scuffling as a burly woman and a dead man, both stripped to the waist, abandoned an uncoordinated dance-off.
“What the fuck do you all think you’re doing?” rasped Mouana, her words landing like the drops of fat in the firebowl. The crew looked up at her sheepishly. All that moved was the smoke from the fire, coiling into the red-lit cowl of mist that swallowed the sea. It was Kaba that answered, stepping forward and kneading the side of her cracked jaw.
“It’s tradition, sir. My idea. Every time a boat makes the transit, you feed up and get the helmsman a drink. Washes away the problems of one world, so you’re fresh for the next. Look at the, mist sir,” said the old boatwoman, gesturing at the fog that filled the gathering night. “The river’s breath, coming hot through the gate. We’re close now.”
“Then pack up the damned fire and get to stations,” growled Mouana, rattling the quarterdeck’s rail with her good hand. “Drinking and bloody dancing won’t help us with our problems. Our problems are following us, and they’re bigger than any of you know. Fucking Dust is coming for us, and she’s not one for parties.”
Without another word, the crew began to pack up the festivities, dousing the fire and packing food into sacks with little more than a murmur of disappointment.
Then the bagpipes started up again. Mouana was indignant for a moment, until she saw their player was closing the clasps on the instrument’s case. As the drone grew louder, so did her fear.
Talk of the Devil, thought Mouana, and she shall appear.
Turning back to the ship’s stern, she looked out into the thick mist that swirled in its wake. The sound came from behind them, a low drone that swelled and waned with the breeze. As she stared, a line of faint lights appeared high in the mist, each surrounded by a nimbus of fog.
“Triremes!” cried Mouana, just as the Asinine Bastard, its crew presumably spotting them at the same moment, sounded its foghorn.
“Triremes! Triremes!” The call rose along the ship’s deck, underscored by the boom of the horn, and all thought of clearing the feast was forgotten—as Mouana hurried to the helm, sailors ran about the steaming embers of the fire, calling each other to stations. They had minutes at best until the aircraft were on top of them.
“Shall we turn her about to bring the prow guns to bear?” called Kaba, hands poised on the ship’s wheel, as armed sailors rushed into the cabin.
“No—give the engines all you can, and make for the gate. They’re here to capture us, not sink us, so the real fight’ll be on deck. Get the Gun and the Pentangle on the radio and bring them close alongside—close enough for boarding, if it comes to that—then get as many guns as’ll move back to the stern. Get me Eunice and the Bruiser to anchor the defence, and raise me Fingal on the Bastard.”
“Do you see ’em?” asked Mouana as the line came open, holding the receiver to her bloodless lips as she craned through the bridge cabin’s rear windows.
“Clear as day,” came Fingal’s ashtray voice, almost fresher-sounding in death than it had been in life. “Four Alaunt-class and a Mastiff, looks like, plus an Aquila hanging in the back for heavy lifting. All L-T colours too, so I’m guessing looted from the city defence. Mastiff’s coming in fast and dropping low, gunships are splitting off—guess the action’s coming your way.”
“Fine. Make speed with us as best you can, drop your running lights, and get as many bullets in that thing as you can as it passes. After that, it’s up to you—do all you can to get us through that gate.”
“Roger that,” snarled Fingal, and Mouana threw down the radio, before snatching a rifle and aiming an accusatory finger at Kaba.
“As for you, stay on that wheel. No clever tricks, no changes of plan. Just get us through, and sound the horn when we’re a minute away so the living can get below deck. Eunice, Bruiser, you’re with me at the stern. Get aggressive.”
“Fack off!” bellowed the bruiser with glee, delivering a knuckle-cracking punch to Eunice’s shoulder as the towering warbuilt grumbled her approval. A cheer sounded as they moved onto the deck and made for the stern; cadavers waved shotguns in salute from behind improvised barricades, and living rebels crouched with them, grinning as they checked their weapons.
There was an electric mood in the air; after two days of uncertain pursuit, the crew was itching to have something to shoot at. The drone of the triremes filled the sky now, though the attackers had killed their lights to disguise their approach. Every sailor in the mass was squinting into the rolling mist, looking for something to aim at.
As they passed the turrets on the ship’s flank, which in its former life would have housed the warbuilt as it pursued monsters across Ocean’s depths, Mouana had Eunice tear free one of the chainguns salvaged from the Bargain. The weld had been hasty and the gun came free with a little more than a tug, but still the sailors cheered as Eunice held it above her head and bellowed.
Mouana waved the mob of defenders to their places across t
he ship’s rear deck, and took a guilty glance at the console she couldn’t quite bring herself to untape from her arm. She had seen trireme raids countless times during the siege and knew that, despite the crew’s eagerness for a fight, they were going to need everything they could bring to bear just to have a chance of scraping through. Although she knew there was sod-all chance of an answer, she had to at least ask for Wrack’s help.
WRACK. KNW YR SULKING. BT SLDRS R CMING TO GT U. LOTS. HLP?
The reply came quicker, and left her much angrier, than she expected.
I SEE. THANKS, BUT I’VE HAD ENOUGH KILLING FOR A BIT, AND I’M AT A REALLY GOOD BIT IN MY BOOK. KNOW YOU WANT TO KEEP HOLD OF ME, BUT IF IT’S ALL THE SAME TO YOU, I’LL SIT OUT THIS ROUND OF SLAUGHTER AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS.
Hissing a string of curses that reached deep into her soldier’s vocabulary, Mouana went to rip the console from her arm, only to find her mangled hand couldn’t grasp it firmly enough. She settled for smashing the screen against a railing. After that, there was no more time to spare on thinking about Wrack, because the night was on fire.
Tracer bullets streaked from the turrets of the Bastard, filling the dark with orange hail behind them, then spilled green light on the sea as they found the Mastiff. Illuminated by the fizzing of bullets against its shields, the assault carrier barrelled towards them over the waves, a jagged black mass in a flaring shell. Alongside it, sleek as barracudas, a pair of Alaunt gunships accelerated ahead of the larger craft.
“Hold your fire!” called Mouana, as the juggernauts swooped toward them. “Keep down!”
The Alaunts opened the throats of their guns, and bullets slammed against Gunakadeit’s stern, whipping over their heads and burying themselves in the hull patches the crew had set up as barricades. Gritting her teeth at the thought of a shell to the face, Mouana squinted over the rim of her cover, and was rewarded by the sight of the lead Alaunt rupturing under the Bastard’s hail of fire. Its engines screeched, then erupted in a crown of white fire, sending the wedge-prowed gunship plunging into the sea as it lost its fight with gravity.
The elation was brief: even as one escort foundered, the other thundered over them, letting rip with its ventral guns in the process. The Alaunt passed close enough to make the deck shake with its field-effect, and a scream rose from across the quarterdeck as bullets streaked into bodies from above.
“Hold fire,” repeated Mouana over the bark of the guns, keeping her eyes on the lumbering shape of the Mastiff. It was a slower beast, but had sunk down to deck-level and was closing on them fast. The Bastard had brought some of its heavier guns to bear on the craft, but still they did little more than rock the assault ship as the shells burst against its shields. The Mastiff was built to deliver infantry under withering fire, and soaked up the punishment like spring rain.
Mouana stared it down, fixing her eyes on the massive armoured drawbridge at its prow, and waited for it to surge forward. Gunfire erupted behind her as either the Pentangle or the Chekov’s Gun engaged with the other escort craft, but there was no point paying attention—if they didn’t unload everything they had when the carrier’s jaw hit the deck, they were fucked whatever happened.
“Wait... wait!” urged Mouana above the howls of the wounded, and levelled her rifle at the Mastiff’s jaws as they loomed. Beside her, Eunice began to spin up the barrels of her weapon, and rumbled what sounded a lot like a cheerful song. “Faaaaack OFF!” hollered the Bruiser, waving his shotgun like a club, and the crew took up the cry.
As if rising to the challenge, the mammoth assault craft gunned its engines and surged forward, its jaw falling open and a chorus of yells and war-screams blasting from its throat.
“Fire!” screamed Mouana, as the iron jaw clanged down on the deck’s lip, and the air filled with hot steel.
First out of the Mastiff were two enormous brutes in rough-forged armour; iceball cultists with bearded helms and rotten fur totems spilling from their shoulders. They advanced behind man-high shields, singing a death hymn as they waded into the steel blizzard.
Their armour sang with countless impacts, and they staggered as if against a wind; in the strobing glare of the muzzle flashes she could see the iron dissolving under the onslaught. But they made it far enough to slam their shields into the deck, forming a barricade of their own before they collapsed, their song drowned by the blood in their lungs.
Even as they fell, their fellows were streaming from the trireme’s throat, vaulting over their carcasses in a torrent of mad snarls and roaring shotguns. These were not the disciplined ranks of the Blades, but madmen drawn from the desperadoes and transients who followed the company across the worlds, hoping to earn a uniform. The irregulars.
Mouana, like the rest of the company, had always treated them with fear and disdain, those lunatics who lived in sprawling, filthy tent cities behind the lines. They were men and women with nothing to lose, who volunteered for the truly hellish assaults in the belief that if they survived enough charges, they would earn a commission in the company. Few ever did, but the hope was enough to make them almost god-touched in their fervour.
“DUST!” howled an emaciated woman as she leapt onto the defenders’ barricades, face set in a snarl of an ecstasy beneath bandaged eyes. She raised a monstrous axe assembled from engine parts, but crumpled sideways as a shotgun blast took out her leg. Before she hit the deck, a pack of loping swamp-men had clambered up and over the line; they dived at Mouana’s crew with flintlocks and bone knives, slashing and thrusting even as bullets punched holes in their bodies.
The mass of defenders pushed forward, sailors with billhooks and flensing poles craning over the front line to thrust at the onrushing savages. In front of Mouana, the Bruiser’s broad back dipped and his arm came surging up with a lit bottle of preservative, in an arc so practised it was almost elegant. The firebomb burst in the Mastiff’s throat and shrieks rang from its interior, but still more bodies came, swinging weapons even as fire danced on their limbs.
Eunice was a wall of rage next to Mouana, her face a rictus as the chaingun carved apart the stream of attackers. But for all that fury, they were losing ground. For every attacker that joined the heap around the cultists’ shields, three more swarmed over the pile, with only a few yards of deck to vault before they reached the sailors’ lines. And their defence was weakening; ammo clips were emptying, dead hands were fumbling as they struggled to fit new ones.
Mouana cried for her troops to pull back, hoping a little more space would give them a better killzone, but there was no chance of being heard over the thunderous whine of the chaingun beside her. Then she glanced back to make sure their path was clear, and realised they had bigger problems.
The Pentangle was dying, its ammunition store belching a column of flame as it cooked off. The fire-plume lit the bellies of the three surviving Alaunts as they circled in the fog above, dark shapes like scavengers round a dying whale. Already one was descending to their now-undefended starboard flank, while the others roared high over the deck to duel Chekhov’s Gun.
Figures were leaping down from the settling trireme already, and as many broke their legs as found their feet. But even the maimed were undeterred, and those that made it down intact whooped and cackled as they spread out over uncontested deck. Gunfire came from the ship’s prow as the sailors Mouana had stationed there moved amidships to tackle the boarders, but she knew the bulk of her force was here, locked in a desperate struggle against the Mastiff. With the Pentangle sunk and the Gun engaged, they risked being surrounded and overwhelmed if they couldn’t link up and hold the ship’s centre.
Eunice’s gun fell silent for a moment as the giant reloaded, and Mouana gave the call to pull back, the tape on her chest wound pulsing as she strained for volume. After a brief look behind her, Eunice caught on, and began dragging the sailors in front of her backwards. Some, too addled by death to notice the retreat, stayed at their positions to be swallowed by the flood of irregulars, but their demise bought time for
the rest to begin struggling down the quarterdeck ladders, firing all the way.
As Mouana took the first shaking step back down the stairs, the world turned white and there was a terrible crack of thunder. The deck rumbled: through the wall of fog, a prow loomed—the Bastard. With the Mastiff hovering stationary off their stern, the Bastard had closed the gap and brought its main cannon to bear, putting a shell right through the thing’s shields.
For a second the carrier just shuddered in the air, sheet lightning crackling across the hull as its shield struggled to reform. Then flames gushed from its mouth as its engine caught, and the craft tilted backwards into the sea. Its hooked jaw held its grip on their deck for a long moment, and Mouana could have sworn the whole deck tilted as it pulled them down, but then the hinges ripped and the Mastiff fell away.
If the crowd of irregulars on the deck cared that their ship had exploded behind them, they didn’t show it. Singed bodies, thrown from the mouth of the carrier as it died, simply staggered to their feet and screamed their general’s name, as if the Mastiff had been sacrificed in her honour. In moments they had their vigour back, and were charging across the quarterdeck at the sailors still holding the stairs.
The situation was no less grim on the main deck. The Alaunt was level with their deck now, and dozens of irregulars were spilling from its side hatches. They teemed over the sealed hold, kicking over the smouldering remnants of the roasting fire, and swarmed up the nest of cranes and antennae at the ship’s centre.
Before she knew it, Mouana’s force was pinned between the quarterdeck and the hold, hemmed in and fired on from both sides. A flaring shape arced into the press from the top of the stairs and only the desperate dive of a sailor, their torso already riven nearly in two by a blade, stopped the bomb from carving a ten foot crater in her force. If the irregulars were reckless enough to use grenades on a ship they were trying to capture, the fight was all but over.
By way of emphasis, the mist overhead parted to reveal the open belly of the Aquila as it descended, lift cables already dangling. Below it, madmen were savaging the hold’s doors with axes and welding torches—given another minute, she thought, they’d have the top off and be able to winkle Wrack’s casket out like meat from a shell.
