Exiles in Arms: Night of the Necrotech (17 page)

A cry of terror she recognized as Vulger’s caused her to turn, in time to see the horned witch cut down the last man between her and Vulger. The man staggered away, trying to staunch the blood spurting from the stump of his hand. But the hag’s magic defied his effort, his blood seemingly sucked from his body by the eerie runes still dancing about the edge of his wound. The crone cackled as she turned toward Vulger. Clenching her teeth, Taryn aimed her magelock and fired.

The hasty shot struck one of the hag’s horns and sent it spinning into the air. The witch wailed, clutching at her broken horn with one hand while making an arcane gesture with the other. As Taryn rushed in, the witch’s body seemed to evaporate, becoming a pillar of crimson mist. Taryn shivered but forced herself to lunge past the vapor. She seized Vulger by the shoulder and half led, half pushed him from the parlor.

Almost paralyzed with fear, Vulger proved an obnoxious burden. Taryn was anxious to get him someplace at least relatively safe so she could get back and help Rutger. If it wasn’t already too late.

“They’re here to get me! They’re here to get me!” was all Vulger could say.

“If you don’t want them to get you, then pick up the pace,” Taryn snarled back.

The harshness of her words touched something in the gangster’s brain, turning him vicious in his panic. He pulled free from her grip. “I pay you!” he snapped at her. “I pay you to protect me from those . . . those things!”

“Then let me do my job,” Taryn said, trying to spur him down the hall.

Again, Vulger shrugged free. “You don’t tell me what to do! I tell you what to do!”

There was no humor in her laugh as she grabbed the gangster by the arm. “You can tell me anything you want once I get you somewhere safe.”

“He already knows someplace safe.” The voice was Lorca’s. The gang lieutenant came running down the corridor toward them. He smiled apologetically to Taryn. “I was wrong about you two. You really know your business.” He nodded back down the hallway. “Your friend can use your help back there. I’ll take care of Vulger.”

Taryn shook her head, not trusting Lorca’s conciliation. “It’s my job.”

Lorca looked from her to his boss. “You don’t want anybody finding out about your escape tunnel, do you, Vulger?” He smiled as a guilty hostility rose to the gangster’s face. “A way out, but just for him. That’s how you got clear of the Scrapyard, isn’t it? Left by a back door even your own people didn’t know about. You didn’t stick around to see Taryn and Rutger save anybody. You were too busy saving yourself.”

Vulger shook his fist at Lorca. “Watch your lip, you rig-running hustler!”

Taryn looked at the two gangsters, disgust welling up in the bottom of her stomach. One look at Vulger told her that Lorca’s accusation was legitimate. She unholstered one of her magelocks and started to reload. “Get him to his spider-hole,” she told Lorca. “Like you said, I have to get back there and help my friend.”

Rutger circled around the fighting ’jacks. He shouted at Rex, warning it to keep a tight hold on the helljack’s spike. He’d heard descriptions of these infernal machines, monsters that had earned the name “Reapers.” The spike was piston-driven, made of magically strengthened bone and corrupted metal. It could gouge almost the thickest armor plate, stabbing into the hull to puncture engines and rupture boilers. The favorite tactic of these diabolic monstrosities was to secure a victim with its harpoon, then reel in the enemy ’jack and reduce it to scrap with its spike.

The necrotech’s body was ringed with arcane runes. The creature pointed its claw at the Reaper, and the helljack’s spike began to blaze with sorcerous energies. The magic began to corrode Rex’s fingers. Trails of metal crumbled from the warjack’s hand as the eldritch emanations rotted its grip.

Staying close to the Reaper and keeping its spike locked at its side rendered its best weapons useless, but the necrotech’s venomous magic was quickly breaking the warjack’s hold. Then there was the problem of the necrotech. Rutger knew the hallmarks of a warcaster when he encountered one. The uncanny lifelike reactions, eerie quickness, and dexterity of the ’jack indicated a level of control far beyond the skills of even an accomplished operator.

While he shouted to Rex, the Reaper raked its tusks across the warjack’s hull. The necrotech was trying to get one of those tusks lodged under Rex’s neck. From there, a twist of the helljack’s torso would send Rex’s head from its shoulders. Given the helljack’s damnable quickness, it was only a matter of time before the fiendish machine succeeded.

Rutger circled the feuding machines. He tried to bring Jackknife slashing down across the helljack’s leg, but even as he struck out he was assaulted from behind. A powerful blow gouged across his back, shredding his coat. If not for the armor he wore underneath, he would have been slashed clean to the bone.

The mercenary spun and brought Jackknife flashing outward. He caught the downward swing of a sword, sending both it and the rotten arm holding it bouncing across the floor. His undead attacker didn’t seem aware of its mutilation, continuing to thrust at him with its stump.

Beyond the attacker he’d mangled, Rutger could see more risen climbing up from the pit. They moved in concert to the crazed shrieks and gestures of a wizened witch slathered in blood. Stroking the broken nub of her horn, she pointed a bony claw at Rutger and sent the walking dead after him.

“Azaam!” the slobbering voice of the necrotech called down. The creature had climbed to the top of the spiral stairs to secure a better vantage. Perched on the walkway above, the monster looked even more spider-like. Its eyes were fixed on the witch rather than the mercenary. “It will go ill for you if you interfere with my experiment.”

The reprimand was accompanied by a wheezing laugh, but the witch paled as though it were a threat uttered by the Dragonfather himself. She made a slashing gesture with her bloody hands and the walking corpses withdrew, stalking away from Rutger as though he burned with the light of Morrow.

“Now,” the necrotech called down to Rutger, “we will see if mortal desperation can match immortal design and construction.”

Rutger forced himself to hold the monster’s gaze. “Yes, we will.” He drew his hand cannon. The necrotech smiled down with its ruined face, seemingly amused that this young human would be so bold as to shoot at it.

Its amusement turned to an angry howl when Rutger spun around and discharged his weapon at the helljack. He didn’t aim for the hull, exhaust pipe, head, or any of the other places where the Reaper was protected by thick armor. Instead, he fired on the skeletal spool fitted to the harpoon gun. From point-blank range, the impact shattered the fused bone. Loops of heavy chain spilled from the broken spool, piling in a heap on the floor.

“Run!” Rutger shouted to Rex.

As he turned to follow his own advice, Rutger noted the corpse of a gangster lying nearby. Across the dead man’s waist hung a belt of iron spheres. Rutger dropped down by the body, stripping the grenades.

Pivoting its torso, Rex smashed its shoulder into the Reaper, jarring it just enough for the warjack to disengage. As Rex retreated, the Reaper struck with its spike, tearing a deep fissure in the plating along Rex’s side. Then it pursued. Rutger slung grenades as the necrotech started to follow its helljack. They fell short, bouncing down the spiral steps before exploding. The bottom of the stairway was wrenched from its moorings, sending the entire structure crashing to the floor. The necrotech staggered back, its body cut by the flying debris. Stranded atop the landing, the creature growled and stamped each of its spidery legs in a fit of frustration.

Rutger ran ahead of Rex, urging the warjack to greater speed. He knew it could only be a matter of moments before the faster, nimbler helljack was back on its feet and in pursuit. He wanted the monster to pursue, wanted to get it as far from the parlor as he could. He’d disabled its harpoon gun to ensure it would have to follow Rex and fight at close range.

A desperate plan had occurred to Rutger, one that would depend on keeping out of the helljack’s reach, yet close enough to pounce on the Reaper when the time came. It would also depend on the necrotech warcaster staying right where he was.

Rex’s pounding legs shook the music room, knocking bits of plaster from wall and ceiling. The tremors redoubled when the Reaper came charging in. The helljack dodged around columns, exhibiting again the lifelike semblance only a warcaster could endow.

Rex was almost in the far corner of the room, its back to the wall. The charging helljack whirled toward Rex, but instead of rushing around the columns and using them for cover, the machine came barreling straight on. The warcaster’s guiding influence was gone. Rutger had lured the Reaper beyond the necrotech’s range of control. Only the helljack’s innate consciousness was left.

“Scrap him,” Rutger commanded, pointing Jackknife at the paralyzed Reaper. A bestial growl vented from Rex’s grill as the warjack turned and rushed its enemy. Rex slammed its crippled hand against the helljack’s chest, using the drill bits embedded in its palm to rip the hull. Rex’s other hand closed about the helljack’s arm. Without the Reaper’s active resistance, Rex was able to bend the spike back upon itself, driving the tip into the piston.

The helljack’s optics flashed as its cortex recovered, but it was far too late. Rex’s hand was closed about its skull-like head, twisting it, wrenching it from its fastenings. With a metallic shriek, the tusked head popped free of its socket. Rex threw it through the window with an almost contemptuous flourish.

The headless Reaper staggered, trying vainly to work its crippled piston arm. Wisps of Cryxlight bled from the gash in its chest where the drill bits had punctured the soul furnace. Necrotite-infused oil spurted from the severed hoses in its neck. At last, with a final shudder, the helljack crashed to the floor.

Rutger looked down at the obscene hybrid of necromancy and mechanika. He looked up at Rex and said, “Let’s go settle with that thing’s master before it finds a replacement.”

Man and machine rushed back to the parlor. They found only dead gangsters waiting for them. Necrotech, blood hag, risen, even most of the wreckage of the Helldivers were gone. They’d retreated back into their tunnels, probably the moment the necrotech lost control over its helljack. Even as Rutger contemplated the idea of going down into the tunnel after them, the mansion shook and a thick plume of dust erupted from the pit. The Cryxian forces had collapsed the passage behind them.

“So much for that idea,” Rutger said as he stared at the hole.

The sound of shots booming out elsewhere in the mansion brought him whipping around. He stared down the hallway where Taryn had led Vulger.

Shouting her name, Rutger ran into the corridor. He prayed it wasn’t already too late.

Hurrying back to help Rutger, Taryn’s first indication of peril was the bullet shattering the tile at her feet. A second shot sent her diving behind a pillar. Peering from behind the column, she saw a grisly figure striding down the hall in a long ragged greatcoat at least two generations out of fashion and tall boots with wide cuffs and enormous buckles that were older still. Above the collar rested the bony cranium of a fleshless skull, only a few grey wisps of hair clinging to its head. A tricorn hat, tattered and threadbare, was pushed down about the apparition’s head.

In each of the apparition’s gloved hands it held an archaic horse pistol such as those favored by highwaymen and duelists of two centuries past. The ghost pointed one of the pistols at her and fired. Bits of marble flew from the side of the column.