Guns of the Temple (The Polaris Chronicles Book 1) (9 page)

The sound of fighting nearby diverted his attention. He inched forward and peeked his head around a corner.

“These shitlords coming out the walls or something?” Hadassah snarled as she parried a saber cut to her head. In exchange, she sank the chisel-point bayonet at the end of her Nagant into his gut. Seeing that her weapon was still stuck in his comrade, another tried to bash her head in with a mace. She whipped her own pistol out from her baldric and shot two rounds into her attacker’s chest and one into his forehead. He fell, blood spurting from the fatal wounds. She turned on another man and punched the muzzle into his teeth to knock him back before shooting him in the throat. “Say hello to ‘Esther!’” she cackled, blowing acrid smoke away from the thickly pitted barrel.

“If you’re going to name your piece, you should feed her a better diet!” Draco countered as he swung his fighting iron in an arc. His swing connected with an unhelmeted enemy and knocked the man over with his brain exposed. He deftly avoided a sword thrust from another enemy and lashed out with the iron again. The janissary caught it with the aid of a heavy gauntlet and pulled. Draco drew a fighting dirk and stabbed it into his enemy’s neck through a gap in the armor.

“I think I like weapons better than people. They don’t bitch and complain over every little thing,” Hadassah said. She twisted a commando’s elbow into a joint lock and whirled him into a sword thrust meant for her. The body dropped and she planted two rounds in the swordsman’s chest before executing her stricken quarry on the ground.

Her slide locked back on an empty magazine. She drew one of the wood-handled canister bombs from her baldric, lit the fuse cord, and made to throw it in Taki’s direction.

“Hold!” Taki emerged from his cover.

Hadassah frowned. “Shit, I thought you were one of them! What’re you doing skulking around there?”

“Your bomb!” Taki pointed. “You’re still holding it!”

“Oh, this?” Hadassah pinched out the sparkling end and shoved it back in its place.

Taki stared, dumbfounded. “Are you insane? What if it lights back up again?”

She laughed. “It’s a fake. I use it to flush out idiots. You know, like yourself.”

“L-ludicrous.” He clenched his jaw, angry at having been so easily fooled. “We need to regroup with the Captain. She mentioned a gatehouse. Head there with all haste.”

Draco waved dismissively. “Aye, we will, but after taking care of necessities.”

Taki grimaced. “
What
necessities?”

“Our spoils, of course.” Draco took out a knife and crouched over one of the fallen. He started, methodically, to cut away the straps on the dead man’s armor and rummage through his pockets. To Taki’s horror, Hadassah was busy doing the same. “You’re welcome to a share, by the way, so don’t be shy.”

“We’re in the midst of battle, and all you can think of is
looting?
What of our orders?”

“If you’re worried about the Captain, don’t be,” Draco said. “She’ll take care of herself, and she’s also entitled to plunder.”

Taki balled his hands into fists. “This is unforgivable. Where’s your valor?”

“Valor doesn’t pay for food. It also ends up getting you killed. Relax. The place will hold up for a few minutes.”

“I’ve never seen such cowardice!” Taki fumed and paced. “If you won’t help fight, then
I
will!”

“Have it your way, man.” Draco shoved a handful of milligrad into a pouch hanging from his belt and moved on to the next body. “Dassa, help me. This one’s a
woman
.”

“So what?” Hadassah said. “She’s dead.”

Taki turned and ran.
Godrotting losers! Pieces of shit! I’ll show them how a real patriot comports himself!

Aslatiel stepped into the citadel with his Alfa. The janissaries had been brutally efficient, and the armory’s forces completely unprepared and undermanned. Dominion men lay strewn across the corridors of the outer fortifications in gruesome poses, with bodies studded by bullet wounds to complement their missing limbs and heads. Now he needed to make sure that the inner ring would fall with the same ease. He picked up the subtle essence of prana discharge wafting down from above. So there
were
polaris on the premises. He would have to find them and snuff them out before they could coordinate an effective defense.

Shots burst out and provoked the soldiers to instinctively duck. At the threshold of a metal doorway leading to the inner ring gatehouse, two janissaries rolled down the stairs bleeding and limp. The rest of the entry group froze, still stacked up outside and unsure of whether to keep going. With one hand resting on the hilt of his blade, Aslatiel sidled up the steps while avoiding exposing himself to fire and placed his other hand on the cool surface of the door. With his prana he could sense the enemy’s location when sight, sound, and smell could not. To others, this sort of tactical prescience was tantamount to witchcraft. Usually, that earned his kind fear and resentment.

“Hold fast,” Aslatiel commanded. “They’ve got at least a dozen in there behind concealment, all with crossbows and guns aimed at whoever comes in. It’s a deathtrap.”

Their leutnant seemed like he wanted to object, but caution won over bravado and he held up his fist to signal the men to freeze. Aslatiel nodded his thanks to the officer. Some would have simply ignored his assessment and ordered their troops to press on, and then blamed him anyway when the rest of the squad was inevitably shredded by a well-placed ambush.

“What do we do now?” the Leutnant asked.

“There’s an officer in there leading them. Possibly polaris. I’ll talk with him—see if he’ll yield.”

“I thought your kind were all about killing everything that moved.”

“We do negotiate occasionally. Under no circumstances should your men enter the room before we give word. Zhukov, Rana,” he said, turning to his group. “You’re taking care of the light if things get loud. Lucatiel, you’re with me.”

“Yes, dear brother.” She marched up to the door to join him. She slowly worked out the kinks in her neck, and made sure that the straps on her armor were fully tightened.

Fahnenjunker
Mikhail Zhukov, the third member of Alfa, knelt nearby and murmured an incantation. His body started to fade and blend in with rough pattern of the walls, until he was but a subtle distortion against the stones. Fahnenjunker Elsa Rana, fourth and most junior, followed suit and disappeared too. The room grew oppressively silent as the preparations came to an end. Many of the men had still never seen true prana usage up close.

“Men and women of the Dominion, will you parlay?” Aslatiel shouted at the door.

“Fill your hands, you Imperial dicksuck!” replied someone from the inside. “Who wants to know?”

“The leader and second in command of Spettsgruppe Alfa.”

There was a pause. Finally, the door opened a crack and suspicious eyes glared through the opening. Aslatiel shifted to avoid the muzzle of the firelock that also protruded through the gap.

“Disarm yourselves and step in. No funny movements or witchery or we splatter you on the walls.”

Aslatiel nodded and unslung the gear that held his sword and submachine gun before handing them to a janissary nearby. Lucatiel passed her twin jian to another soldier.
I see fingerprints on the steel and you’re dead
, she signaled with a playful wink. They entered the room.

A dozen Argead soldiers nervously rose from the safety of their cover and trained muskets on their new prisoners. At the head of the group was a man in his late twenties, clad in polished half-plate and heavily armed. He wore the brass sigil of a knight on a chain across his chest and on his pauldrons were engraved a pair of lions rearing on their hind legs. The knight confidently strode forth with a double-barreled howdah pistol leveled at the pair.

“I thought you’d be smarter than to actually take me up on the offer,” the knight sneered. His eyes flicked between the two siblings and he licked his lips. “Now I’ve got two captives of some renown. Tell your slave-soldiers to retreat back across the river, or we’ll cut the tendons in your ankles and show
her
what really happens to little girls who think they can fight alongside men.”

Lucatiel rolled her eyes.

Aslatiel wanted to sigh with disappointment. These were not the Temple soldiers he sought, just braggarts.

“My offer is this, Peer of the Dominion
,
” he began
.
“Surrender at once, and you and your men will be allowed to retreat with your weapons and banners intact. Your standing will be preserved in the eyes of your lord. You have my personal assurance of this.”

The knight laughed, as did his men.

“You want me to run away like some sort of…
eunuch
making a back-room deal? You Imperials either have no sense of shame, or the rumors are true and all boys are castrated before they start making seed. Certainly explains all the faggotry in your armies. No, you demonspawn pigs, we men of the Dominion believe in honor and loyalty. Something
your
kind wouldn’t understand.”

Aslatiel shrugged. “Would you prefer to die in battle instead? That can be arranged.”

“After we cut off your feet, we’ll all bugger
you
as well. Since you have no manhood it doesn’t make us queer.”

“Dear brother, this is boring. May I kill them now?” Lucatiel drawled, tapping her foot impatiently.

The knight shook his gun at Aslatiel’s face. “Silence your whore!”

“You keep shouting at
me
for some reason,” Aslatiel sighed, wiping spittle off of his jaw. “But it’s
her
you should be afraid of.”

The torches blazing against the walls died without leaving embers. Panicked, the Dominion men reacted with a barrage of musket-and crossbow-fire that bathed the room in murky, dull orange and roiling smoke. The room sank into blackness again.

“Cease fire, you cockgobblers! You’ll hit me!”

The men started to cough and gag from the fumes.

“Did we get him?” whispered a shaky voice.

“Shut up! They’re still here!” hissed another.

“Light the torches…”

Rapid-fire thunder from dual pistols interrupted the last command while white novae flitted around a woman in the center of the room. In the last visions of dying Argead soldiers, Lucatiel moved with stuttering grace, with not a single wasted movement as she sent hollowpoint rounds into their bodies. As abruptly as it had begun the firing stopped, and the room was again plunged into acrid silence.

“Approach,” Aslatiel said, smiling grimly in the darkness.

The janissaries rushed into the room with torches while Lucatiel slowly released herself from her end-stance. Her foot eased off Aslatiel’s shoulder, allowing him to rise from kneeling. All of the Dominion men-at-arms had fallen, slumped in the indignity of death with perfect clover-leaf groups of bullet holes in their foreheads. The knight was bent backwards over a barrel, still clutching his expensive pistol as a death reflex.

“That’s our Leutnant,” said Elsa with an appreciative whistle as she emerged into visibility under an extinguished torch.

“Did I do well, Aslatych?” asked Lucatiel to her brother as she changed magazines and holstered her guns. Though tiny compared to the dead knight’s hand-cannon, her pair of ancient pistols marked “26 Austria” were far better tools of destruction, and entirely worthy of her power.

Aslatiel scanned the interior more closely. It was a powder repository where the frigates’ spare shells and bombs were stored. Naked explosives stacked on wooden shelving gleamed with cosmoline in the light of the Imperial torches.

“Yes… But I fucked up,” he muttered, a sick feeling mounting in his gut. Using that tactic had been a mistake. One misplaced shot or ricochet and she might have blown the lower levels up. It would have meant an abrupt end to everyone’s life, and most of all, failure in the eyes of his master.
Ba’gshnar
was right. Lucatiel could take care of herself, but he still had much to learn. A solid punch to his arm shook him out of his dreadful reverie.

“Aslatych, just how bad of a shot do you think I am?” Lucatiel said, crossing her arms in frustration. “I’m not going to get blown up by some stupid warhead. If I did, who would protect you then?”

Aslatiel had to smile, despite himself. He was foolish to have doubted her in the first place, and they were most definitely alive. Gently, he took her hand and touched his lips to it with as much chivalry as he could muster.

“Luca, my dear, you are the only woman I would fear to face in combat. If you weren’t my sister I’d want you as my wife.”

She beamed in pleasure before suddenly drawing him in and wrapping her arms around his waist with a grunt of effort. The bear hug was capable of crushing an enemy’s spine, and Aslatiel struggled to breathe. He was embarrassed, but at the same time, flooded with an unreasonable sense of fulfillment.