The Ace of Skulls

Thirty

Ashua sighted down the barrel of the pistol, using both hands and the windowsill to steady her aim. It was a long shot, and the snow made it harder. She breathed out and squeezed the trigger.

Out there in the meadows, one of the grey hurrying figures toppled over and lay still.

She felt nothing for her target. He was just a shape, an anonymous man in a bulky coat, too distant from her life to cause her to care. It was a necessary detachment, born of a childhood in the slums. Life and death was cheap to her. Everyone’s except her own.

To her left, at the other window, Jez was firing with mechanical speed. Her rifle cracked and snapped. Each time, a man went down.

There were too many to hold back for ever, Ashua knew that. But they could make the attack costly enough that the Awakeners might think again, pull back, try another tactic. They could buy time. That was the best they had, right now.

She took aim and fired again. This time she hit nothing. Her target kept coming, forging on through the snow, making a trench with his thighs. Someone shot at her from the meadow; a bullet smacked into the wall near the window, scattering brick shards. She ignored it. Her second shot dropped the man.

She ducked back into cover. Sporadic return fire was coming their way, but the meadows provided little protection and the defenders had an elevated position. She heard other guns firing along the line of houses which defended the hamlet. Pelaru and Harkins. Malvery’s shotgun boomed from somewhere behind her, echoing through the courtyard, before it was covered up by the drill of rotary cannons.

Jez pulled back to reload. Ashua glanced across the bare living room at her. Her teeth were gritted and her eyes bulged. Her hair had escaped the rubber tube she used as a hairband and was hanging over her face. She looked half crazed.

She caught Ashua’s eye as she snapped the last bullet into the breech and primed the rifle. Ashua looked away quickly. There was something coiled and dangerous about Jez, something that might lash out at any moment. Ashua didn’t want any part of it.

Engines overhead. One of the gunships, moving above the house. The low roar of thrusters filled the room, shaking the pipes. The sound of it overwhelmed her; the size of their opposition seemed suddenly immense.

We’re not going to get out of this, are we?

The thought came treacherously, slipping a blade of doubt between her ribs. If she could have run then, she might have done. If she had a way to escape, she might have taken it. But there was nowhere to go.

The lack of options bolstered her courage. Easier to stand when you were backed against a wall. She shook her head, spat an oath of defiance. All her life, she’d fought to survive. She wouldn’t fold now.

A moment later she was back at the window. The Awakeners had multiplied out there. Some of them were tucked down in the snow, aiming up at the houses. Others ran on, intending to storm the defences by weight of numbers. Jez was making them pay a heavy price. Ashua added her weapon to Jez’s, and took down another two men before ducking away to reload.

‘There’s too many,’ Jez was muttering furiously. She punctuated her words with rifle shots. ‘There’s too-’ Crack ‘-damn-’ Crack ‘-many!’

Suddenly the world turned to noise and chaos, and Ashua flung herself back as bullets smashed along the flank of the building, tearing the windowsill to matchwood, setting the air sparkling with flying shards of glass. She lay back against the wall that separated them from the kitchen, stunned. Jez had crammed herself into the corner of the room, eyes blazing, actually drooling like some damned carnivore in sight of bloody meat. There was a screech of thrusters as the gunship swung out over the meadow. It rotated in the air and lashed another salvo across the row of buildings. Ashua scrambled to get out of the way, but all she could do was press herself down behind a ragged chair. Bullets whined through the room, but it was only a brief scattering before the pilot pulled away to focus attention elsewhere.

Ashua stayed where she was, chest heaving and heart pounding. That was too much. You couldn’t fight that kind of firepower. The Awakeners had gunships on both sides of the houses now, and they were closing in on her location.

‘This is bad,’ she said to herself, in a frightened little-girl voice that she hadn’t heard for a long time. ‘This is really, really bad.’

Footsteps. Running footsteps, racing up the stairs that led into the kitchen. Alarmed, she slid around the wall to the doorway that linked the two rooms. She leaned round the corner and aimed her pistol.

A man in a coat burst into the kitchen, coming fast enough to shock her. She pulled the trigger.

Click.

Pelaru stared at her in amazement, frozen in place. Ashua stared back, wide-eyed. Now she realised: in the confusion of the gunship assault, she hadn’t had time to reload.

The Thacian ran past, dismissing her, heading for Jez. Ashua let out a shaky breath.

Inearly shot him, she thought. What if that had been Malvery?

She pushed herself back against the wall. It was something solid, something she could rely on. She opened the chamber of her revolver and began pushing bullets in, keeping one eye on the whispermonger, who’d crouched down next to Jez.

‘Jez!’ he said. She didn’t seem to be listening. ‘Jez!’ he snapped. She met his gaze. ‘Don’t,’ he said firmly.

‘There’s too many,’ she replied hoarsely.

Ashua snapped the chamber shut and hurried back to her window. The sill was shredded; now there was just a ragged hole, edged with brick and splinters. Snow blew in and settled among the pieces of broken glass. She cast about for a sight of the gunship, but it was lost in the whiteness.

The Awakeners were at the edge of the meadows now. Only a short slope separated them from the houses. She thrust her pistol out and began firing wildly. Two men jerked and collapsed, blood-spatters stark in the snow.

‘Hey! Will someone get back to shooting?’ she shouted.

Pelaru had Jez’s head in his hands and was gazing hard into her eyes. Her teeth were bared; spit dripped from her chin. ‘Control it,’ he said. ‘You’re not invincible. You can’t fight them all. Control it!’

‘Damn it, I need help!’ Ashua yelled. She loosed off another couple of shots, then retreated as a bullet nicked the hood of her coat.

Jez knocked Pelaru’s hands away and shoved him back. He stumbled and tripped over his heels. As she stood there, hunched and savage, the full terror of her swept over Ashua. The Mane inside her had broken the surface. Her aspect changed, and in the dim light of the afternoon she looked like some nightmare phantasm. Then she threw down her rifle and leaped through the window.

‘Jez!’ Pelaru cried. He ran to the window and looked down.

The Awakeners were slow to react, puzzled by the sight of a woman in overalls leaping across the snow towards them. The nearest man barely had time to raise his gun before Jez drove her fist through his belly and out through his spine. She wrenched her arm free and shook him off, spraying a fan of red across the pristine white meadow. Then she lunged for another.

Some backed away or ran, others brought their guns to bear and fired wildly. But Jez was never where the bullets were; she flickered rapidly, fooling the eye. She flurried among them like the snow, and when she passed she left them headless or eviscerated.

Ashua watched, dumbfounded, as the Awakeners tried to keep up with her. One man shot his companion by accident while trying to draw a bead on the daemon on their midst. She fired off the last of her rounds into the back of an Awakener who wasn’t even looking at her any more. All their attention was on Jez: the attack had faltered.

She dropped back to reload again. ‘Hey, you wanna give her some help?’ she said to Pelaru, who was standing by the window. Pelaru gave her a sharp glare. Then he jumped out of the window himself.

‘Not like tha-’ she began, but he was gone. She cursed, reloaded her gun and looked out of the window again. A blast of snowflakes chilled her face and made her blink rapidly. She’d lost sight of Jez, and caught only a glimpse of Pelaru before another squall took him away again. All that was left in their wake were bodies, the dark shapes of dead men punched into the snow, their liquids seeping out of them.

The weather had closed in hard and suddenly, and she was unsure which way the battle was going. She was alone, and felt momentarily lost. Could even Jez and Pelaru turn the tide, or would the Awakeners come back in force again, with only her pistol to oppose them? Silo and Malvery were elsewhere; she had no idea what Harkins was up to. The Cap’n would surely have been back by now if he’d managed to get the Wrath in the sky. So what was she supposed to do now?

Then she heard engines, the gunship coming back, and that decided her. She wasn’t going to stick at her post when everyone else had abandoned theirs. She’d find the others, or find her own way out of this mess.

Keeping low, she scampered out of the living room and into the ruined kitchen. Through the smashed windows she could hear the other Predator, still patrolling above the courtyard. She peered out, and then ducked back as she saw it sliding through the air towards her. It had come low, and was almost level with her on the first floor. The pilot was checking the houses, looking for targets.

Pressed against the wall, she flexed her hand on the hilt of her pistol. What she wouldn’t give to get just one of those flying bastards off her back. Was it worth trying for a lucky shot? To empty her gun at the cockpit, see if she could get the pilot through the windglass?

Her breathing quickened. The thought of it excited her. Fright had made her reckless. Yes. Rot and damn, yes! Fire off all five rounds then run. She’d do it. She’d take down that gunship, and then maybe they’d have a real chance.

She listened to the engines, waiting for the right moment, when the gunship had passed by.

Not yet. . not yet. . NOW!

She popped up and thrust her pistol through the window. But the gunship hadn’t gone past her as she thought. It was right in front of her, a monster’s face of cannons and metal, looking in. Blindly she fired, squeezing the trigger again and again. Bullets panged and sparked off the gunship’s nose. Somehow she hit the cockpit, putting a hole in the windglass. The pilot, shocked and surprised, flinched away from the bullet and pulled the gunship aside. It slewed in the air and retreated a few metres.

She hadn’t hit the pilot. She should have run then, but the enormity of her mistake struck her and rooted her to the spot. There was no way she was going to make it out of the building. In a second, the pilot would recover and press down on his guns. He’d drill the house to rubble with those rotary cannons.

On the far side of the courtyard, she saw a movement. On the first floor of a half-demolished shell of a house, Colden Grudge stepped into view, his enormous autocannon slung low on his hip. He tipped up its barrel, aimed it at the gunship, and pressed the trigger.

The autocannon thumped three times. Ashua threw herself down. The gunship exploded.

A wave of heat and flame and choking smoke blew through the kitchen. Shrapnel spun through the air and embedded itself in the far wall. She heard the gunship’s engines cough and shriek as the great mass of metal fell out of the sky. It crashed into the fountain at the centre of the courtyard, crushing itself up like a ball before detonating in a final blast that sent parts of it flying off as far as the bridge.

When the echoes had died, she pulled herself up and looked down into the courtyard. There was no sign of Grudge. Only the flaming wreck of the gunship was left, belching smoke into the snowy sky.

A great surge of exhilaration swept through her, lifting her. She felt suddenly immortal. Dirtied and bruised, she lifted her fist and laughed wildly.

‘That’s what you get when you mess with us!’ she screamed hoarsely at the broken gunship. ‘Yeah! That’s what you get!’

And she hurried off down the stairs to find her companions, buoyed by a new belief that they might just live through this after all.

Where are they? Where is everyone?

Crake fled through the darkened mansion. Panes of wan light striped chilly and still rooms. He clattered and shambled, fighting with his pack. Wires tangled his legs. He tore them away, pulled off the damper sphere that dragged along behind him. He fumbled at his belt and tugged at the screamer and its battery, fighting to remove them without breaking stride. After a short struggle, they came loose, and he tossed them aside too. They were useless now, their charge used up.

He broke out into a corridor. The sonic flux emitter in his backpack jogged and clashed against the battery inside. The pinecone transmitters sticking out of the top wobbled and jerked. It was a makeshift design, not built to withstand violent shaking. It wouldn’t hold together long.

But it wasn’t that which brought him up short in the end. It was the recollection that he had dynamite in his pocket. Wasn’t that supposed to be dangerous if you shook it around too much? Or was that only when it was old? He didn’t know, but the thought was enough to check his panicked run. He came to a halt, gasping, leaning on his knees.

Calm down, Grayther. Calm down.

Spit and blood, he was frightened. The first time he’d met an Imperator was bad enough, but then it had been one Imperator against a half-dozen targets or more. This was three Imperators against three, and the sheer force of them was awful. He was in no doubt that his heart would have given out under the stress if he’d been subjected to much more of that. The Imperators wouldn’t have even needed to enter the room to kill their opponents.

He’d nearly died. The reality of that thought wormed its way into him.

What about the others? Did they get away? Plome wasn’t exactly in great shape: had he even survived that first assault? Where were they now?

And where were the Imperators?

From outside he heard the sound of gunfire over the wind. They were still fighting out there. Good. It was when the gunfire stopped that he’d really begin to worry. He wanted to put his earcuff on, to found out what was going on, to see if Samandra and his friends were alright. He wanted the comfort of other voices. But he didn’t dare. Imperators were somewhere nearby; he couldn’t afford the distraction.

A creeping sense of dread began to build up behind him. His finely-tuned senses rang a warning. He looked over his shoulder. Was it his imagination, or was the darkness thickening at the end of the corridor? Was it just his fevered mind that told him the walls were closing in, ever so slightly? Did he hear a soft, gasping breath, like the last exhalation of a dying man?

Fear clawed its way up his throat from his belly, and he had to move again.

He went slower this time. Now that he had a lid on his panic, stealth was needed rather than speed. He wished he could shuck off his pack entirely, but the sonic flux emitter was his most potent weapon, and he couldn’t abandon it.

He needed to find the others, that was all. Most importantly, he needed to find Kyne. He couldn’t go up against the Imperators on his own.

But the house was silent, and if his companions were out there, they were staying quiet.

He slipped into a dining room dominated by a long table. Another fire was burning here, casting welcome warmth and light into the monochrome nightmare that Crake had found himself in. Feeding the flames to make the mansion look occupied had kept them busy during their preparations. A pointless ruse, in the end. The Awakeners had them outmanoeuvred from the start.

There were three doors from the dining room: one at each end and another between them. Crake snuck through the room, reached the door in the middle and looked through it.

Beyond was a corridor with several rooms and a stairway leading off it. At the end was a large rectangular window, its pane frosted and its sill piled with snow.

Silhouetted in the drab light from outside was a tall figure wearing a cloak and hood. Crake thought for an instant that it was Kyne.

It wasn’t.

The terror hit him again, but he was already running, sprinting as fast as he could towards other side of the dining room. His muscles seized and the strength fell out of them, but his momentum carried him forward, and somehow he stumbled through the doorway and into the small sitting room beyond.

To his relief, his strength came back. The fear was huge but bearable. And the more distance he put between himself and the Imperator, the more it diminished. He crossed the room, out into a corridor, turned a corner.

It’s lost me, he thought. They cast their power like a net, and I slipped out from under it.

The Imperator didn’t know where he was for the moment, but he’d been seen. His pursuer would come hunting.

He reached into the side pocket of his pack and pulled out the control panel for the sonic flux emitter. It was a thin metal board with several dials and a switch, attached by wires to his pack. Like most daemonic equipment, it ate up power, and even with Kyne’s specialised batteries it wouldn’t last more than a couple of minutes. But the transmitters had quite a broadcast range. Maybe he could blast it out, find the Imperators’ frequency quickly. When they started to scream, he’d know he had it. It would serve as a warning shot across their bows. Drive them back, make them think twice.

He just needed to know if it would work. He needed to know if he had any way to fight them. It was fear more than tactics that made him hit that switch.

Nothing happened.

He toggled it on and off again frantically. There should have at least been a hum of power from the pack.

The wires.

Some connection had come loose during all that running about. Maybe the battery, maybe something else. It was a haphazard, slipshod design, but they hadn’t exactly had the time to make something perfect. And now it wasn’t working.

The darkness gathered through the doorway. The cold press of dread gathered with it. He heard a footstep.

Oh no, he thought, and fled again.

He ran through corridors and rooms, he ran downstairs when stairs presented themselves, but the Imperator was relentless. Whenever he stopped for breath, the air began to thicken behind him again, a nameless, primal horror bunching and growing there. Then he was forced to move on.

The mansion was large, and in his fright he became lost in it. He heard banging from somewhere below him, and remembered the staff locked in the basement. The gunfire and explosions from the hamlet had panicked them, and they wanted out. The fools: if they knew what waited out here, they’d stay quiet.

An idea had grown in him, that he might abandon the others and flee, out into the snow where his friends and his lover fought the Awakeners. Jez was there, at least. If the Imperators followed him, she could-

Wait! His eyes went wide. Jez! She could save them! The half-Manes, the best weapons they had against the Imperators, were out there on the battlefield.

Trying to catch the Imperators was the last thing on his mind now. He just wanted to live.

He stopped, felt in his pocket for the earcuff. Quickly he drew it out, put it to his ear.

An Imperator stepped round the corner.

Crake yelled, staggered backwards, tripped on his heels. The earcuff fell from his hands and rolled onto the floor. He threw out his hand to balance himself. It found a door handle, which turned beneath his grip. The door swung open and he fell through just as he felt the icy grip of the Imperator’s power seize him again.

He swung the door shut behind him as he staggered into the room. It was a pantry, large and well stocked with deep shelves full of canned goods and preserves. A small window, high up, gave a little light. Crake was still off-balance as he wheeled in. He turned and fell on his side; there was a loud crash as the pack on his back took another heavy knock.

Panic. Blind panic. No way out. A closed room. No way out anywhere.

He scrambled backwards towards the far wall, reaching for his gun as he went, digging in his pockets, looking for anything that would prevent the awful thing outside from coming in. His searching hand closed on a hard waxy cylinder as his pack bumped up against the shelves, allowing no further retreat.

He pulled out a stick of dynamite from his pocket.

A desperate cry escaped his lips. Spittle flecked his beard. He reached into another pocket and tugged out a box of matches, which scattered as they came. He picked one up and struck it against the stone floor.

All he saw was a weapon. He was made automatic by terror, stripped down to survival instinct alone. The match flared, driving back the dark for an instant; he touched it to the fuse; then he flung the dynamite away from him with a futile blind motion, as a child might cast a stone at a man three times his size. The dynamite hit the door, bounced and rolled into the corner of the pantry, beneath the shelves, its fuse fizzing.

The fact that Crake was alone in a room with a lighted stick of dynamite was drowned out by the landslide of horror that came down on him. His throat tightened. He couldn’t breathe. His heart wrenched against its moorings.

The handle turned, and slowly the door opened, and Crake knew that when he laid eyes on the creature that had come to claim him, he’d die on the spot. Yet when the Imperator stepped through, he realised he was wrong, that there was another level to terror previously unimagined. The Imperator turned his atrocious gaze upon Crake and pinned him there, and Crake mewled and whimpered and would have screamed if he could, but there was no breath left in his body. His heart was going like a machine gun, and it burned in his chest like he’d swallowed hot coals.

Then it was as if someone had clapped two hands over his ears, hard. As if he was a boy on a beach, hit by a wave too big to withstand, brought under where the world was a dull roar, to be dashed on the stones. His legs were seized and he flipped round so that he was thrown face-first into the shelves. The air was full of projectiles; he was battered from above by falling jars and cans. He covered his head as best he could, too shocked to make sense of what was happening.

Peace returned, except for the clink and clatter of falling glass and rolling cans.

He let out a breath. His heart was still pounding fit to burst. He listened to it slow, his back to the room. Every part of him was pummelled. His pulse and breath seemed amplified, but all external sounds were dull, as if his ears were clogged with cotton wool.

With numb fingers, he undid the belts that held his backpack to his body. He slipped his arm out and sat up and looked.

The room had been destroyed. Shelves had collapsed, shedding their contents. Glass was everywhere. A black and broken heap of leather and flesh lay on the floor by the door. There was little blood. But the monster was still, and the fear had gone.

Gritting his teeth in advance of the pain, Crake got to his feet. He could still do that, then. He looked at himself. He was bruised and cut everywhere, but with effort he could move everything. Dry-mouthed and battered, but alive.

‘I killed you,’ he croaked at the dead Imperator. He was almost as surprised by that as the Imperator must have been. ‘I killed you.’

A defiant bravery crept over him, and any notion of escape was pushed aside. He still had breath in his body, and the enemy was proven fallible. He wouldn’t call on the half-Manes. He didn’t need them.

One down, he thought. Two to go.