"I've had my moments."
"Hell, yeah. Good work. We did good work. You remember what's his name?"
"Probably. What was his name?"
"Shinto... Shinko... Shimko... some frig like that."
"Alek Shinato?"
"That's the frigger!" Worna exclaimed. "Throne, that was a good day. Sarum, on the look out. You got a tip on the down low and we were in. But how many frigging gun-happy trogs did that guy have waiting for us?"
"Almost too many." Nayl admitted.
"Almost too many, that's a fact. Las like confetti. Bracer bought it right off."
"Bracer was a stump," said Nayl. "He was asking to be wiped the day he applied for his licence."
"Yeah, that's true."
They walked on a little way.
"I was in the chasm that day, Nayl," said Worna. "Pinned. Took one in the leg, still pains me. But you came through. Cleanest kill shots I ever saw, no lie. The two stiffs with the cannon, then Shinto himself. End of story."
"Shinato."
Worna grunted. "He's dead. What does it matter?"
"I'm the one pinned now, Lu."
"Yes, yes, you are."
"Never seems fair to me." Nayl remarked, knocking the ash off his lho-stick. "We work for coin, always have. It's never about ties or bonds or loyalties. I saved your life that day, but it doesn't count now."
"Maybe so, maybe no." Worna replied. "This is why I wanted to talk to you, in private, so to speak. I don't like to see you go swirling down the head with these other mongrels. There'd be a place for you, just say the word."
"A place?"
Worna gestured around them. "I got a new crew together, with a good source of retainer fees, all the perks. These bastards are the best, but I could always use another good gun. Say the word, and you're working for me."
"You're joking? I've been serving the Inquisition for decades."
"I know. But, like you said, we work for coin. No ties, no bonds, no loyalties. You've been working for pay, and pay is what I'm offering. Since when did you or me care who was servicing our bill?"
"This is because you owe me?" asked Nayl.
"This is precisely because I owe you. My life, I owe you. I'm offering you your life in payment of that debt. Join my crew. I can square it with Culzean. Pay's sweet, did I mention that? I don't like the thought of you skull-shot with the others, and I have a strong feeling that's how it's going to end. Come and play with the winning team, now, before it's too late."
Nayl drew on his lho-stick. "Nice offer. Tempting. But how the frig would you ever trust me? Hello? Ordo work, for decades, remember?"
"Well," murmured Worna, "you'd have to prove yourself, to me and the crew."
"How?"
Lucius Worna looked back around the chamber to where Kys was sitting under guard. He slid a vicious combat dagger out of his hip rig. "Gut the frigging telekine witch for me, would you?"
Nayl blinked. Then he smiled and took hold of the blade.
"Make it fast," Lucius Worna advised.
TWO
Leaping, bounding, skipping, they pour down over us under the red heat of the gunshot sun. Their chitter hits us first, then their stink, and then the impressing weight of their torrent.
Carl is screaming. The housekeeper is screaming. Both are hammering at the unyielding door.
I know the door is sealed and will not open because I know this is a trap. Zygmunt Molotch's last, best and most horrific trap.
The first of them land on me, scraping their hook blades off my chair's hull. The weight of them pushes my chair down into the dust and threatens to topple me. There is a sour stink of the adrenal hormone driving their aggression.
What are these chattering creatures, these monsters? They are unknown to me, unknown to Imperial lore. What does it matter anyway? They are death. They are my death.
Ballack is firing his weapon, yelling out. The wave rolling in on him falters, punctured. Vile, purplish ichor explodes from shot-blasted bodies and clumps the dry sand where it splashes. How long can he hold them back?
Angharad. No wonder Harlon is so enamoured of her. She's like a fury, standing her ground, her long steel swinging. Limbs fly off, hooked members flipping and spinning away through the air. Snouts are truncated. Horns are turned aside, hooks deflected. Ichor sprays. Evisorex bites. The Ewl Wyla Scryi. The genius of sharpness. I doubt any Carthaen in clan history has ever faced down such a foe single-handed. She is magnificent. She turns and spins, kicks and slices, driving the organisms back, damaged and slain.
I estimate she will last another minute and a half.
Carl turns from the door, firing his autopistol wildly. He scores hits. It's difficult not to, given the sheer wall of squirming menace driving into us. Leaping forms burst in mid-air and tumble, twitching.
These are impossible odds. We are going to die. Hook blades squeal and scrape against my chair's surface. We are going to die. How quickly is up to me.
I fling the increasing layers of gouging, yapping bodies off me with a mind-flick. Some of the creatures sail back a long way into the ranks behind them. Righting my chair, I send out another telekinetic burst that pulps the front rank in a blizzard of purple-black jelly and shattering chitin.
I am an Imperial inquisitor. I will not go down without a fight.
I pop my weapon modules out of my chair's chassis. Paired psy-cannons. I open fire and blitz the black and white organisms bounding towards me. Ballack has drawn his back-up weapon, an auto-snub. He fires into the oncoming swarm. There's been no time to reload his las.
Evisorex rips and shreds. Bodies are opened, bisected. Hind limbs still attached to violently lashing tails fly past, gushing noxious liquid from their severed waists. I sustain my fire, as long as my hopper loads last. Leaping horrors pop, burst, fracture, explode in showers of viscous matter.
"Open the door! Open the door!" Carl is screaming.
The housekeeper has sunk to the ground in shock, the key falling from limp hands.
I can just hear the housekeeper murmuring. What is that?
The Great Devourer. The Great Devourer...
The action is savage, unstinting. The more I hit and burst, the more of them there are, capering and bounding in. Their chattering mouths seem to be laughing at us.
"I'm out!" Ballack shrieks. Angharad leaps to defend him, decapitating two of the creatures and kicking another aside. The bodies are piling up. Ballack cowers behind her, trying to slam home a fresh clip.
He's too slow. A scything limb catches Angharad across the forehead and knocks her down. A glancing blow, not enough to kill.
But she's dead anyway.
Unless-
I keep the chair's cannons firing. I reach out, and ware Angharad, snatching her up before she hits the ground. Evisorex is a purring monster in my hands. It knows what it has to do. I let it drive into the enemy, remembering my blade schooling - from dear, lost Arianhrod long ago - and allowing Angharad's training to leak from her unconscious mind to inform my movements. I cut them apart, monster after monster after leaping, pouncing monster.
Ballack has reloaded. He stands up, blasting into the endless wave. He kills every single thing charging at him except one. A gouging hook tears into his thigh. He falls, passing out in pain-shock.
I ware him too, dragging him back into the fight, making him shoot again. His gun roars.
+Carl! I need you!+
Thonius has also reloaded. He fires his pistol point-blank into the wall of jabbing, black, chitinous snouts and sees braincases burst with each pump of his trigger.
He has only a few shots left.
+Carl!+
Carl Thonius goes down. I see it happen. I see his frail body, limbs cartwheeling, carried over by the pouring wave of creatures. I try to reach out, but I can't ware him too. I'm stretched too far with Ballack, Angharad, and my own chair. The chair is still valiantly pumping cannon shots into the endless legion of monsters.
They land on me, clawing and
clacking. They push me back, despite the holes I blast in them. The chittering monsters explode and topple away, but there are always more pouring in behind.
They weigh me down. They overturn me. This is the end. Their abominable hooks screech and tear at my chair. Internal system alarms sound as they puncture my armour. Too many, way too many.
This is the end.
Gregor, I'm so sorry. I-
The world, red already, goes blood-red.
I am blinded by blood. I feel their blades dig into me.
I try one last time to-
Red, red, red, a flare of insulted rage-
Lucius Worna looked up at the door sharply.
"What the hell?" he muttered.
The door was rocking in its frame, pounding. Red light, like the issue of a dying sun, seeped through the gaps between the door and its frame, and shafted into the Wych House.
"Something's coming back," Nayl said. As Worna looked back around at him, Nayl flicked the smouldering butt of his lho-stick into Worna's left eye. Worna snarled in pain and recoiled, clutching his face. Nayl lunged forward with the blade Worna had given him, but there was suddenly no time to finish the job. No time at all.
Up on the highest platform, the door shuddered. It flexed in its frame, the wood bulging, and blew open on its hinges. A huge, pressurised gout of scouring fire and boiling red energy vomited out of the doorway.
The fire-cloud was filthy and red. It seared out through the door's frame in a great, concussive belch that shook the platform and the room itself. Everyone in the theatre chamber was knocked to the floor. All the candles and lamps around the edge of the platform flew off and smashed in the lower floor space. Spilled lamp oil ignited. The expanding fireball from the doorway rolled up into the dome overhead. Several electrical systems, overcooked, exploded in showers of sparks.
Another belch of flame gusted out of the open door, as fierce as the first. The chamber shook again. Fires caught and began to blaze in the girdered vault of the theatre's dome. Something, a photo-lumin lamp perhaps, exploded with a volatile report and spat debris across the chamber.
The Wych House lurched, as if wounded or stung. It staggered. Those who had managed to get on their feet fell back down again. The chamber was lit amber by the spreading, cracking fires and the eerie red glow pouring through the open door.
Nayl struggled to rise, but Worna was already standing. He grabbed Nayl by the throat, lifted him off the walkway with one hand, and threw him like a doll. Nayl hit the rail, tumbled over it, and disappeared down onto the lower deck where the lamp oil fires were raging. Worna turned, gazing at the wide open door and the red sunlight streaming through it.
More flames, weaker now, billowed out of the open doorway, followed by a shimmer of alien dust. Then silence.
"On your frigging feet!" Worna yelled at his men. He drew his chainsword, moving towards the steps that led up to the top platform. Dazed and bewildered, his men hurried to follow him, all except the two watching Kys. The hooded housekeepers remained in a cowering huddle.
Something quick and jerky moved, fleetingly, inside the red glare of the doorway. Two gleaming silhouettes leapt forwards together, and hung for a moment, perching on the sides of the door frame with their nimble, clawed feet, like birds. Then they bounced down onto the platform into view. Tails high and straight, they stepped forward slowly, their hook claws scraping the deck.
The organisms chattered back and forth, snouts clacking, stabbing tongues flicking out between needle teeth, as they advanced carefully into this new, unknown location. The smell of them was rank and sickening. Crouching against the wall on the walkway ring behind the men guarding her, Kys stared up at the prowling creatures in disgust and involuntary fear. Some of the bounty hunters around Worna began backing away. Even Worna had come to a halt, halfway up the steps.
"Doren, Kixo," Worna hissed. "Get up there and take those ugly sons of bitches down."
The two men chosen advanced nervously up the steps onto the upper platform, carbines raised. The creatures stopped in their tracks and seemed to observe the slowly approaching men with curiosity.
"Got a clean kill shot on the first," one of the cautious bounty hunters muttered, aiming his carbine from the shoulder. "Get ready to take the oth-"
The nearest of the monsters turned, regarded him with a tilt of its head, and pounced with an abrupt, effortless spring of its hind legs. The bounty hunter was brought down under its weight, his carbine firing uselessly into the roof. It had him pinned for an instant, face up, on the deck. He began to scream. Its four hook limbs flicked out and snapped down like shears, quartering him like a portioned game bird.
The entire kill had taken barely a second. With an anguished howl, the other man opened fire, blasting the predator off his colleague's messy corpse. The shots blew its torso open in a spatter of purple, sticky sap, and knocked it clean off the platform. The second monster yapped like a feral dog and sprang at the shooter.
All of the other bounty hunters opened fire instinctively, shooting from their positions on the raised walkway and the upper steps. The broadside of frantic shots shredded the thing in mid-air. They also slew its intended prey. The bounty hunter toppled forward in a mist of blood.
"Cease fire!" Worna yelled. "Cease fire, you dumb friggers! You just wasted Kixo!" His spooked men were no longer listening to him. A few were backing towards the exits. The rest were training their weapons at the open door.
Horned black snouts came snuffling out of the red light. Drooling teeth chittered. A dozen more of the black and white things sprang through the doorway into the chamber, then a dozen more, bouncing and jumping.
All hell broke loose.
Worna's men began blasting indiscriminately. The red glow of the burning chamber lit up with a shower of bright white las-bolts. Gleaming alien bodies ruptured and fell, thrashing in death agonies, but there were too many of them. The chittering predators, agile and shockingly fast, ploughed forwards into the men, cutting them apart. The shooting turned to screaming. Those of Worna's men that could, broke and ran.
"Stand your frigging ground!" Worna bellowed from the upper steps. He turned in time to see one of the black and white horrors launching itself at him. Lucius Worna didn't flinch. He met its attack with his chainsword and cut it in half. It was not a clean kill. The creature's limbs were still flailing and stabbing wildly and it crashed into him, throwing him backwards down the steps.
The men guarding Kys had fled. She rose, fighting the urge to follow them. She had to find Nayl. She had to see if Ravenor would return, although if these things were gathered on the far side of the door, she didn't hold out much hope of that happening.
She ran towards the huddled, moaning housekeepers. Behind her, Worna's men were blasting and dying.
"Move!" she yelled at the housekeepers. "Get out of here!"
None of them stirred. They rocked and mumbled.
"You idiots!" she cried. Something slammed her into the wall. One of Worna's bruisers had shoved her aside in his effort to escape.
A black and white shape landed directly on his back. He grunted as he was flattened, face down, beneath it. It quickly snipped off his arms and head.
Kys heard and smelled the torrent of human blood emptying down through the grilled walkway decking from the butchered corpse. She rose slowly into a crouch, edging her kineblades out. The long metal blades came free from her bodice and floated up on either side of her face, pointing forward, suspended by her telekinetic impulse.
The monster calmly bent down and nipped meat from the corpse with a delicate snap of its teeth. She saw the glossy blackness of its upper armour, scribbled with lines of old scars, the waxy whiteness of its lower body, where patches of thread-worm parasites clustered. She could smell the metallic hormone stench of it, and feel its presence scratching against her mind. It raised its head slowly and turned its horned snout towards Kys. Its eyes were awful, lifeless slits above a rictus grin. Rivulets of bright human blood d
ribbled down its gleaming, bone-white chin and dripped onto the walkway.
It chittered, its mouth snapping and chattering, tongue stabbing. Tasting, sensing, smelling, all at once. Throat sacs under its chin pulsed and swelled.
Its powerful legs tensed, and it sprang towards her.
Kys rolled furiously. Her paired kineblades met the pouncing thing in mid-air, punching clean through it like high velocity rounds. She'd aimed for the throat sacs, the softest, least armoured part of it. The sacs burst as the blades punctured them, and yellow fluid sprayed out. Chitinous dorsal plates cracked a nanosecond later, as the exiting blades blew out of the monster's back in foggy sprays. The kinetic shock stopped it short, mid-pounce, and dropped it onto the walkway beside her. It writhed, snapping at her, tail curling and flopping, its hook limbs thrashing. Then the entire walkway section it lay on fell away, eaten to pulp by the bio-acid that had poured out of its throat sacs. It crashed down onto the theatre floor space below.
Kys leapt to her feet, summoning her kineblades back. There was nothing left of them. They had been reduced to spurs of dissolving metal by the corrosive contents of the throat sacs.
Kys let them fall. The hairs on her neck rose. She turned, very, very slowly.
Head down, yapping softly, another of the things stepped towards her along the walkway.
THREE
The House shook and staggered. There was an echoing boom from above them, and then another. Plyton was thrown off her perch. She landed hard on the dock's decking and rolled several times. She almost pitched off into the water.
"What the hell was that?" Lucic was demanding, ripping out his link. Bum-face had been thrown onto the deck too. He got up, angry.
"Give me that!" he snarled.
Her arms shaking, Plyton pulled herself up. Down in the dock pool, the water was slopping feverishly. The underboat was straining at its chains, bucking in the icy froth. The chains creaked and pulled. The House shook again - a deep, ugly lurch - and the boat bucked more furiously The hanging chains swished and shook. Ice crackled down into the washing swell.