The Ace of Skulls

Forty-Two

There weren’t many that hadn’t heard tales of Sakkan, or of the Manes which haunted the northern shores and ravaged whole towns when the fogs came. But rumour couldn’t compare to the sight of the first dreadnoughts coming through. Vast, black, tattered things; great anvils of riveted metal, tarnished and ugly, bristling with spikes and strung with a webwork of chains. The dark frigates of the Manes.

A supernatural fear fell upon the city. The terror of the raiders was not only due to reputation; the dreadnoughts seemed to broadcast it. Their mere presence was enough to send the citizens into even greater panic. More dreadnoughts came, and more, until they mottled the sky like corrupted flesh. From their hulls issued Blackhawk fighters, a swarm of flies rising from the rot. The Blackhawks had wings swept forward like the tines of a meat-fork, in defiance of the laws of aerodynamics, and they flew in tight clusters of three or six, so close together that they were practically touching. Yet their pilots moved as one, each knowing the others’ minds, and they never crossed paths.

The dreadnoughts’ cannons opened up, and the Blackhawks raced to attack.

The sky was filled with flame. Explosions large and small billowed and burst as far as the eye could see. Broken craft rained down on the city, trailing fire as they descended, destroying buildings and streets where they hit. It was like a battle out of myth, a titanic conflict between gods of old, while mortals scurried like mice in their shadows, fighting to hang on to their small lives.

‘Can this possibly get any bloody worse?’ Malvery roared in exasperation, crouched down in cover with one eye on the battle overhead.

Ashua held her hand out, palm up. ‘At least the rain’s easing off,’ she said optimistically.

Silo popped up from behind their shield of rubble, aimed his shotgun, then ducked back without firing. ‘Looks clear,’ he said.

A half-dozen Coalition soldiers went hurrying past, shoulders hunched, splashing down the cobbled road. Silo broke cover and followed; the others stuck tight to him. They were moving faster and with less care than he’d like, but speed was of the essence. The Cap’n, if he succeeded, wouldn’t be long in knocking out the Azryx device. By then, they had to have as many of the city’s guns under their control as possible.

Course, if he don’t succeed, all this effort ain’t worth shit, Silo thought. But he trusted the Cap’n to do his part. Hard to stop a man like that, when he finally set his mind to something.

He kept his eyes peeled for ambush as they ran. He glimpsed movement through broken walls, figures flitting down cross-streets, but it was hard to tell the citizens from the enemy at a glance. Many of the Awakeners wore no uniform, just a Cipher painted or stitched somewhere on their clothes. They were all Vards: only the trappings differed.

Once this had been a proud and wealthy shopping street not far from People’s Park in the lee of the great crag. Now its windows were smashed, its roofs bowed and fallen in, and flames flickered in the rubble behind unsteady façades. The street was full of debris left by the bombs. Bodies lay hidden among the ruins, an arm showing here, a head there, with blank eyes and bloodied hair. Some lay in plain view, bullet ridden. Silo jumped over them without a thought; they’d become scenery now.

Ahead of him were golems and soldiers, and Century Knights ran among them. The electroheliograph masts were down across the city, so runners had been sent to contact more distant pockets of resistance, while a portion of the palace forces split up to take back the nearest guns. Many of the anti-aircraft emplacements were gathered near the palace, the better to defend Thesk’s heart. Some, presumably, were still under Coalition control, being fortified positions and easily defensible. But that left a lot which weren’t. With three enemies overhead tearing chunks out of each other, a concerted attack from beneath would be devastating.

If they could win back the guns. If the Cap’n came through.

A gatling gun clattered ahead of them, followed by a volley of rifle fire. Silo hunkered down at the end of the street, where it opened into a square. There had once been a tall stone column at its centre, but it had broken midway up and toppled. A heaped bank of rubble pointed westward from its base, like the shadow of a sundial marking the hour of its own destruction.

The Awakeners had dug in here, Sentinels and mercs and peasant volunteers all jumbled up together. Desperate, frightened men, huddled behind piles of fallen stones, lashing out at anyone who came near. First the Sammie ambush, and now the Manes. They saw their great coup crumbling around them, and they had no plan of retreat.

Silo ducked as a bullet chipped the stone near his head. He waved Malvery and Ashua down, conscious of his promise to the Cap’n to bring them back safely. Snipers hid among the ruins, the tips of their rifles visible through crumbling window frames.

But neither snipers nor machine guns deterred the Archduke’s golems. They thundered forward into the square, ploughing towards the barricades. Gatling guns pocked their armour, and bullets sparked on stone. Dynamite was thrown from behind the Awakener barricades. It cost one of the golems a foot and sent another one reeling.

Silo heard a percussive thwip-thwip-thwip noise from above. He looked up, and caught a momentary glimpse of a slender, dark figure on the rooftops. She was clad in armour that covered her whole body, moulded tight to her form, and was carrying a long-barrelled rifle of exquisite design. He spotted her only for an instant, and then lost her again: the colours of her armour shifted with the background, camouflaging her, making her indistinct.

That was all he saw of Zalexa Crome, the Century Knights’ infamous assassin. But where there had been Awakener snipers before, men lay limp with their arms hanging over the sills.

The soldiers ran in after the golems. With them went Graniel Thrate, looking half golem himself in his massive suit of thralled armour, a black metal sledgehammer in one hand and an enormous gun in the other. Bullets whipped back and forth across the square as the Coalition soldiers attempted to storm the enemy positions.

Then there was a low rumble, and the pebbles on the barricade under Silo’s nose began to jitter and dance. With a growl of engines, an armoured vehicle burst into the square, shunting a slide of rubble before it. It was squat and boxy, with a short, wide cannon turret on its humped back, and it ran on enormous metal tracks.

‘Oh, shit!’ said Ashua. ‘A Crawler! The militia used to set them on us in Rabban when things got really bad!’

She was drowned out by the explosion as the Crawler fired its cannon. They covered their heads and crushed themselves down as chips of stone peppered them. Silo’s ears were ringing when he came back up again. Through the dust, he saw the mangled wreckage of a golem lying in the centre of the square, surrounded by the bodies of soldiers.

The Crawler pushed onward, its tracks crushing the dead beneath it. Bullets pinged off its armour as the cannon turret swivelled. Coalition soldiers scattered in frantic retreat. Then the cannon boomed again, and the soldiers went flying, some in pieces.

The Awakeners rallied, spraying the square with bullets. The Coalition forces fell back before the armoured Crawler. Silo and the others helped cover their retreat, shooting at the enemy to keep them occupied.

‘We gotta get to the other side of that square!’ Malvery cried. ‘The anti-aircraft gun’s right over there! Used to get the tram past it on the way to my surgery.’

‘Ain’t goin’ anywhere with that Crawler there,’ Silo said, but then he saw someone come lunging out of cover. Graniel Thrate, his head made tiny his enormous armour, sprinting across the square towards the Crawler. It swivelled its cannon, but too slow. He shoulder-charged it in the side with the force of a steam train, and to Silo’s amazement he drove a great dent into it, collapsing its wheel assembly. The tracks on that side dragged uselessly as the Crawler was pushed back, skidding across the flagstones. It crashed into a low wall and tipped a little, its tracks lifting off the ground. Thrate got his hands under it and, with neck muscles straining, he hauled it upward. It rolled over the wall and crashed down onto its turret with calamitous screech of metal, and there it lay still.

Ashua stared open-mouthed. Even Silo looked amazed. It was hard to imagine, with warriors like that, how the Coalition had let itself get into such a desperate position.

‘That,’ said Malvery, adjusting his glasses, ‘was impressive.’

‘Attack!’ shouted one of the Coalition commanders, and his troops surged forward again. This time Silo, Malvery and Ashua joined the charge.

Now it was the Awakeners’ turn to retreat. They turned tail and fled as the remaining golems smashed through their barricades. Graniel Thrate was among them, swinging his sledgehammer left and right, broken men flying like rag dolls. Others dropped dead from neat headshots, the work of the invisible Zalexa Crome, somewhere up on the rooftops.

Silo, Ashua and Malvery ran with them, picking targets where they could. Silo saw a bearded merc, caught up in the suicidal desperation of a last stand, come running out from cover with his guns blazing. He wanted to die. Silo gave him his wish.

In a flurry, it was over, and the square was clear. They took a moment to breathe, to survey the carnage and destruction that surrounded them. All around, once beautiful buildings were scorched and shattered. The elegance of this great city had been lost in blood and fire. Silo saw the hurt in Malvery’s eyes. This had been his home for most of his life.

The Coalition troops were pursuing the Awakeners out of the square, in the direction of the anti-aircraft gun. Malvery turned his attention to the men lying on the ground, searching for wounded.

‘Later, Doc,’ Silo said, motioning towards to the retreating troops. ‘We need your gun now.’

‘There’s people here I can help. .’ Malvery said, though his protest was weak.

‘Can’t save everyone,’ said Silo.

Then Ashua screamed.

Silo knew it was bad before he even saw it. Ashua wasn’t one to scream. He looked round, and the world decelerated, everything moving in slow motion.

Not just bad. Worse than that.

He’d been so caught up in the battle on the ground that he’d virtually forgotten about the fight overhead. But now the sound of engines was suddenly loud in his ears. Looming in his vision, filling up the sky, the blazing prow of a frigate rushed down towards them, trailing fire. Like a colossal meteor, like the fist of a god.

It crashed into the city a dozen streets away, hitting at a shallow angle. Flame blasted up into the air. It ploughed through stone and steel, carving a vast trench through the buildings, getting louder and louder as it bore down on Silo. A gargantuan beast of smoke and dust and screaming metal and crashing stone, charging him.

Too massive for any of them to avoid. Too fast to do anything about it. All they could do was stand there, locked in a single moment of terror and resignation.

Mother, he thought. I’m comin’ home.

His thoughts were lost in a deafening hurricane of wind and sound, and a wave of heat and force hit him.

After that, nothing.

The dark metal corridors of the Delirium Trigger rang with the shouts of men and the sound of combat. Frey pushed through the press of soldiers, his face a grim mask lit starkly by the muzzle flash of his pistol as he fired. There was momentum in him now. His bridges had burned. Going back would be pointless. There was nothing to go back to.

Sammies. Manes. Awakeners. Treason. All the rack and ruin of his life. And one chance to set things right.

It was too close down here for golems. The Delirium Trigger’s upper decks were a maze of narrow passageways, barely wide enough for two men to walk abreast. The air was stifling, and it reeked of cordite and sweat and blood and the shit in dead men’s pants. Frey shot a pirate through the lung as he came running out of a doorway, and stepped over his gurgling body without even looking down.

He pulled open a sliding door, thrust his gun inside and found only silence. Soldiers shoved past him down the corridor. He stepped inside to get out of the way. His ears had been hammered by the reports of shotguns and pistols; this was a place of relative peace, with the distant detonations and the screams of the wounded muffled by thick bulkheads.

It was Trinica’s cabin, where he’d been heading all along. Once he’d thought it oppressive, with its dark wood panels, brass and iron fixtures and overwrought frowning sconces. A grave and serious room. Now he drank it in with his eyes. In all the world, this was the only place she’d put her mark on. The only place that bore anything of her spirit.

There was her bookshelf, full of academic tomes and literature in both Vardic and Samarlan. There was her chair, and her massive desk next to the sloping window. Light from explosions outside flickered across charts that had been laid out there, and the book that lay across them. A beautifully embossed book.

A book he recognised.

‘Cap’n!’ said Crake. He was standing in the doorway, encumbered by his heavy pack. Frey held up a hand to silence him. He was aware of the need to hurry. This was more important.

He moved slowly across the room. When he got to the desk, he reached out and turned the book over so that he could see the title. It was in Samarlan, but it didn’t matter. He recognised it anyway.

The Silent Tide.

So it was true. Balomon Crund hadn’t been lying to him. Trinica had been carrying this book with her, reading it. In spite of the daemon that controlled her, she’d managed this. A cry for help. A message in a bottle.

‘Cap’n?’ Crake asked again, uncertainly.

He left the book, turned, and hurried back out. Crake moved aside as he pushed through. ‘Come on,’ he said sharply. ‘She needs me.’

They made their way onward, catching up with Kyne and Samandra, who’d hung back to wait for them. The other soldiers had moved up the corridor and were engaged in a new battle. They were about to follow when a blast rocked the Delirium Trigger, sending Crake tottering into the wall.

‘Not Samarlan,’ said Kyne. ‘Must be the Manes getting through. Seems it’s the Awakener convoy they’re after. I doubt it’ll hold for long.’

‘Sounds like the end of the world out there,’ said Crake.

‘Might well turn out to be the case,’ Samandra commented.

‘Hey,’ said Frey. ‘Stairs.’ He pointed down a cross-corridor, where a set of stairs were just about visible halfway along.

‘We should stay with the soldiers, Cap’n,’ Crake said nervously.

‘Soldiers are too damn slow,’ said Frey, starting up the corridor. He glanced over his shoulder at Kyne and Samandra. ‘You’re Century Knights, aren’t you?’

Samandra looked at Crake and shrugged. ‘I’m all good with reckless.’

Frey touched his hand against his chest as they descended. The amulet that Crake had given him was cold against his skin. It seemed a pretty poor defence against what was to come. He didn’t have a great deal of faith in daemonism at the best of times, but Crake’s skills had served him well in the past, and he’d put his trust in worse things before.

He had to believe. That was all there was to it.

The lower decks had wider corridors than the ones above. There was nobody in sight when they emerged, and it was eerily still. It seemed that the majority of the pirates had gone to fight off the boarders. Frey looked left and right suspiciously, his pistol in one hand and his cutlass in the other, listening. The lights here were dim, and the seething gloom was a hot threat.

The daemon, he thought. He could sense it, warping the edges of his consciousness, tingeing the scene with paranoia. She was close.

He looked back at Crake, who nodded in confirmation. He felt it too.

They moved on warily, heading for the hold. The Delirium Trigger seemed to breathe like some vast beast. He heard the clanking of her iron heart, the hiss of her vents, felt her shudder as another shell exploded close by. At any moment, he expected an attack. Yet for all the gunfire and explosions that echoed through the hollow corridors, nothing came for them. Nothing until-

‘Frey!’

He whirled, his arm outstretched and his pistol aimed. As he fired, he caught a glimpse of an ugly face ducking back from a doorway, framed by a dirty mop of black hair. The sound of the gun bounced away down the passageway, and the darkness in the corners seemed to blacken, as if some terrible thing had just turned its attention their way.

‘It’s me, you fool!’ growled a voice from the doorway. ‘Balomon Crund!’

Frey was breathing hard. He was more keyed up than he’d realised. ‘What do you want?’ he said.

Crund showed an empty hand, then poked his head out again. ‘It’s this way!’ he said. He looked up the corridor. ‘Quick, they’ll have heard you! They’re waiting by the door to the hold!’

Frey hesitated. He’d never been liked by Crund, and they’d been enemies more than allies. He didn’t trust him as far as he could throw him.

‘I brought you here, didn’t I?’ he snarled, angry that Frey should doubt him. ‘There’s another way in! A side door!’

There were running footsteps coming from up the corridor. ‘Reckon he ain’t lyin’ about his mates, at least,’ said Samandra. She spun her shotguns around in her hands; they crunched as they were primed. ‘Sounds like a lot of ’em.’

Still Frey didn’t move. Still he wasn’t sure. He’d been betrayed too many times by Trinica and her crew.

‘You can save her, can’t you?’ Crund asked, and there was something imploring in his eyes, something desperate. It was that look that decided Frey in the end. He saw himself in that: a man caught up in his devotion, helpless against it. A man like that would do anything. He might even betray his mistress for her own good.

‘Yeah,’ said Frey. ‘I can save her.’ And he went after Crund through the doorway, with Crake and Kyne on his tail, their packs clanking and clattering. Samandra followed them through.

‘They seen us,’ she said. ‘Be quick.’

They ran through narrow, dark chambers full of steaming pipes. Orange lights gave glimpses of deeply shadowed faces, eyes fierce and intent. Bullets skipped off the metalwork, forcing them to duck. Samandra, bringing up the rear, dropped into a crouch behind the cover of a pipe and started shooting back at their pursuers.

‘Keep goin’!’ she called over the gunfire. ‘I’ll take care of this lot!’

‘Samandra!’ Crake cried. He came to a halt, reluctant to leave her behind. She spared him a moment, and the two of them locked eyes across the room.

‘This is your show now, honey,’ she said. ‘Do your stuff.’

Kyne grabbed his arm and pulled him onward. They heard Samandra’s shotguns blasting away as they left.

‘She’s a Century Knight,’ said Kyne as they ran. ‘Don’t worry about her. Worry about what’s ahead.’

Balomon, who’d been lumbering in front of them like some shaggy troll, suddenly halted at a narrow metal door. ‘Through here,’ he said, and tapped a code into a keypad. The door slid open, and they stepped through.

The Delirium Trigger’s cargo hold was a cavern of dark, grimy metal, its roof supported by enormous girders that acted as pillars, running round the outside edge. It was cool here, and water dripped from the ceiling, where the outline of a loading hatch was faintly visible. Electric lamps shone weakly from the walls, but they struggled to illuminate such a large space.

Between and behind the pillars, a dizzying range of equipment and loot was stacked and lashed together. There were ammo crates, chests of ducats and tanks of liquid aerium. Shadowy vehicles lurked behind piles of spare parts. Near the back was an enormous bronze head as large as a man.

But it was what was in the centre of the hold that drew their eyes. There, a space had been cleared, and there stood the Azryx device that had destroyed the Coalition fleet.

Frey felt a crawling dread. Here in the belly of the Delirium Trigger, it was more sinister than the first time he’d seen it. An ill, mesmerising light washed out from the towering cylinder at its heart. The lightning that flickered inside the swirling gas suggested a pattern, some snickering code to mock him. The bone-like material that encased the cylinder seemed like a growth, some awful tumour crawling up the glass-like casement. The inscriptions on the brassy towers at its four corners were warnings in an ancient tongue.

The door they’d entered by slid shut behind them, muffling the sound of Samandra’s guns. They whirled; Crake raced to the door. ‘The code!’ he urged. Crund tapped in the code on the keypad. Nothing happened. ‘They’ve trapped us in here!’

The atmosphere in the room thickened, shadows swarmed and the temperature dropped. Frey slowly turned his head, looking over his shoulder. From behind the Azryx device, a lean figure stepped into view, half-lit by the bruised glow from the cylinder.

‘Hello, Trinica,’ he said.