Perdition (The Dred Chronicles) (17 page)

27

Shut It Down

Dred had fifty men at her back. That wouldn’t be so worrisome if she felt 100 percent, but she was still weak from the damage she’d taken in the challenge. Many Queenslanders regarded her with awe, as they’d seen the severity of her wounds when she staggered out of the hall. For her to be back on her feet so soon? It seemed supernatural.

And it
was
, except she didn’t deserve the credit. For obvious reasons, the miracle must remain between Jael and her; it would cause trouble for him if anyone discovered the healing properties of his blood. So Dred added it to the short list of secrets she’d die to keep. Tam was ecstatic, as the men were convinced she was half a step shy of immortality.

Ahead, she spied the first checkpoint. They hadn’t hit the automated defenses that Abaddon was rumored to possess yet, but if Tam’s intel was accurate, she could expect them deeper into Priest’s territory. Dred led the charge, as the zealots had no missile weapons. She took one out with a blow to the skull—and with the weight of her chains around her fist, she cracked it. The guard hit the ground as Queenslanders tore into the other three. In a close quarters fight, with so many bodies around, she couldn’t use her chains like she usually did, but numbers also meant she did less actual killing.

“Form up!” she called, to discourage mutilation.

While she had done her best to unify Artan’s dregs, they were still criminals, and discipline wasn’t their strong suit. A few of them grumbled and stomped the corpses as they went past, but they fell in behind her, two by two. With such superior numbers, they rolled through the next two checkpoints, but the noise of battle couldn’t be concealed.

Zealots streamed down the hall toward them. They were moving so fast, Dred couldn’t get a head count to see how many they faced, but they definitely belonged to Priest. The facial scars he carved on his loyal servants were unmistakable.
Dammit, we’re bottlenecked.
She’d hoped to push farther before reinforcements rolled out. In a mob like this, it would be tough to avoid being knifed by her own men.

On the plus side, there was no room for fancy fighting. Around her, men grappled and punched. She caught an elbow and lashed out with a wrapped fist. The blow rocked the fanatic, and she pushed forward. Dred found room for a tight kick though not a high one. Still, a blow to the ankle was more effective than one usually suspected. Her target staggered back into two others. Their feet tangled and two of them went down.

Her men didn’t hesitate. They ringed the fallen and kicked them until it was certain they weren’t getting up. The corridor stank of blood and sweat until she couldn’t breathe through her nose. Cries and snarls of pain added to the cacophony until it reminded her of the prison riots on New Terra.
Breathe. You didn’t do this.

Her focus wavered, but the Queenslanders were ferocious enough to compensate for her halfhearted swings. At this point, it was all she could do to push forward. Now and then she swung at a zealot who turned on her, but mostly, she shoved a path through the melee. Dred stepped out on the other side and realized she had the numbers advantage.

“Finish them,” she shouted.

Outside the mob, she could breathe a little easier, and she waded in on the fringes. Her head felt dizzy and sick, but she couldn’t show weakness, even if she had been dying five days ago. Weakness didn’t keep a leader in power, and she’d gladly die before giving up what she’d stolen with Tam and Einar’s help. She’d tried life as chattel. There would never be an encore.

Loathing overcame her, and Dred fought hard, living up to her rep as the Dread Queen. By the time the fight ended, ten of her men were on the ground, unmoving, but the enemy was dead, every last one of them.

She knelt beside casualties, hoping to recognize their faces. In some cases, they were so battered, she needed help from her squad to ID them. Once the names had been scratched on a scrap of paper, she tucked it into the top of her boot. At her nod, the men fell in again, grimmer this time. Maybe the march on Abaddon had started out glorious, but death had a way of killing the mood.

“We’ll come back for their bodies,” she promised. “I won’t leave them here. I’ll go with Einar to the chutes myself.”

“We know,” a thin man said quietly.

“The next part will be tricky if Priest has turrets and Peacemakers.”

“How are we supposed to get past them?” a convict asked.

I have no fragging idea.

Without Jael and Einar, she didn’t see a lot of them surviving. But this wasn’t the time to tell them they had been given a suicide run.
Damn Silence anyway.
These men might be the dregs of the galaxy, but they listened when Dred spoke.

She hardened herself to their fate, and answered, “I have a plan.” And then, surprisingly, she did; it came to her like a burst of light. “See Priest’s corpses on the ground? Grab one. If you can, pick a meat shield that’s bigger than you.”

“Genius,” one of the men breathed.

“If you’re too big to hide or there aren’t any bodies left, then hang back. The rest of us will push forward and find a way to deactivate the turrets from the other side. There should be a manual override.”

The Peacemakers would be another issue entirely. It had nearly killed them to deal with one on the way to the salvage bay; maybe Priest spread that story to discourage incursions. She hadn’t gotten confirmation or denial from Tam, as even the spymaster couldn’t penetrate that deep inside enemy lines.

Twenty-five Queenslanders found corpses to shield their bodies; the rest followed at a safe distance. Dred hadn’t recovered sufficient fortitude to follow her own advice, so she stepped to the back—and remembered Wills’s prediction, not so long ago.
Chaos comes. The dead will walk. He’ll cost you everything.
Well, the bone-reader was two for three because the corpses were shuffling forward, as promised. But so far, Jael had
saved
her, not ruined Queensland. Dred knew better than to discount the visions entirely, however.

At the next corner, a turret slammed the floor, saturating the whole area. Her men pressed forward cautiously, testing to see if their meat shields would stand up to the onslaught. Four more went down, but a small, thin convict stumbled forward. The body he’d chosen was almost more than he could lift, and Dred watched his arms straining. He let the corpse fall as he passed the turret’s target field.

“Turn it off,” she called.

“Where?” On his knees, he peered at the thing, and the rest of the squad called out suggestions.

One man, however, sounded like he knew what he was doing, shouting above the others. “It’s on the base. Tip it forward—no, not like that. There you go. Now move it to static mode.”

The turret powered down, and cheers rang out from the surviving men. She shouted along with them because this was an incredible accomplishment, proving intellect and determination could win the day. In a place like this, that revelation felt an awful lot like hope.

“Nothing can stop us now!” a prisoner yelled.

“The Dread Queen’s coming for you!” That came from the small man who had disabled the turret; he stomped his feet in triumph, then punched the air.

Mary, sometimes they’re like children.

“Don’t celebrate too soon,” she cautioned. “If I know how Priest thinks, he’s got the bulk of his men waiting for us inside. There’s more room for an ambush, and these measures slowed us just enough to let him set it up.”

Collectively, their eyes dropped, and the men nodded. Ruining their good mood was a necessary evil. She needed them to focus a little longer. The ones who survived could dance and chant, taunt their fallen foes, and drink themselves into a stupor.
But not just yet.

She went on, “I need someone who can scout.”

To her surprise, Tam slipped up from the back of the group. She hadn’t known he was in the vicinity though that was the spymaster’s specialty. Dred didn’t ask when he’d arrived, best to appear omniscient. That advice, too, came from Tameron. It went against Dred’s nature to take credit for his work, but Tam said he didn’t want the attention as it would make his work more difficult in the future.

Tam offered, “I’ll do it if you hold here for a few minutes.”

“Please,” she said, inviting him to check out the battlefield with a gesture.

Waiting was hard, but the death toll would be higher if they ran in without proper intel. Though she’d warned the men they wouldn’t all come back, it didn’t mean she was crazy as Priest or Silence—and without regard for those who lived in her territory. She didn’t
like
most of them, but she didn’t slaughter them for fun, either.

“What are our chances?” It was a good question.

And if she gave an honest answer, half of these men would run back to Queensland. So she paraphrased an ancient historical vid instead. “We will drive our enemies before us and hear the lamentations of their women.”

The surviving Queenslanders whooped, stomped the floor, and banged the walls. If they had been trying to sneak up on Priest, that would’ve put paid to the idea. But that wasn’t the strategy, so their noise didn’t affect the plan. If Silence was keeping her word, she’d be maneuvering her assassins into position while Priest worried about Dred’s people. Between their combined forces, he would be crushed like a bug.

Well. That’s the idea, anyway.

28

A Priest Walks into a Knife

We are so doomed.

The assault had gone off as Tam had foreseen, but so far, Priest’s people, who fought like madmen, woefully outnumbered them. Jael lashed out, slicing another throat. Of Silence’s crew there was no sign.
Damn the bitch.
Katur’s aliens were vicious despite their small number. The tentative alliance had held as they charged the main hall, only to be decimated by traps.

Since his crew was the first to hit the room, his people were decimated. Bodies hit the floor, severed at the torso, and the stench of blood overwhelmed him. Not just from the fight, either. This place was more of an abattoir than Entropy, where remains were preserved and stylized. Priest left bodies where they fell, evidence of his divinity and power. Some convicts lost their resolve when they saw what befell the men rushing ahead; Jael didn’t blame them for running though what he was supposed to tell Dred about this, he didn’t know.

I can’t kill them all. Sooner or later, somebody will get lucky and take my head.

Still, he battled with the same determined ferocity that had carried him out of the labs, so long ago. He was down to his last ten men when Einar arrived with an impressive boom; the big man took out a wall in doing so, and Jael had never been so glad to see anyone in his life. He wondered where the hell Dred was, too; she had taken the direct route, the most difficult one, too, reinforced with turrets and Mary only knew what else.

“Glad you could make it,” he shouted, as a fanatic slashed at him.

The blade whistled through the air as he dodged it, then Jael angled his palms and crushed the man’s throat. He dropped clean; another took his place. The room was pure chaos—so much screaming, cries of pain mingled with the sucking sounds of open wounds and the stink of urine and visceral terror. In the confusion, he couldn’t find the damned leader of Abaddon. Unlike Dred, he wasn’t in the forefront shouting orders. Probably the bastard was hiding, cowering even.

Einar called back, “Sorry, had to do a little remodeling first.”

“I saw.”

No more time for more talk; Jael’s position was overrun. If it had been a question of skill, he might’ve fought them off, but they charged and tackled as one, no dodging them all. He went down under five fanatics, one of whom seemed determined to cut out his heart and eat it.
Yeah, I won’t survive that.
Jael rolled despite their weight, so he took the blade between the ribs instead of in his chest. He jerked an elbow free and knocked into somebody’s face. Blood spurted from the broken nose, but pain only seemed to inspire them to greater violence.

What the hell.

He’d fought chem-junkies with more wisdom and a greater sense of self-preservation. Jael head-butted another and wrenched an arm out of its socket. The subsequent pop should’ve made a normal man scream. Priest’s follower was so far gone that he
moaned
, like he’d had his pleasure circuits rewired or something.
Is that even possible? They get off on agony?
His sporadic education had informed him about certain antiquated cults that practiced self-flagellation, but he’d thought that was for chastisement, not enjoyment. This religion was all kinds of fragged up.

The floor was slippery with blood, and he used it to slide partway out of the grappling hold one of them had on his leg. He took another stab wound to the leg, but he cursed through the pain and snatched one by the ear, then slammed the man’s head into the ground, hard enough to knock him out. He rolled and kicked, gouged with his fingers until they were slick and red; these men forced him to scrabble like an animal, and he loathed it. Even lifers shouldn’t be reduced to this.

And they say I’m the inhuman one.

Einar reached him as he whittled the five men on him down to two. The big man grabbed one and chucked him into men fighting nearby. A Rodeisian turned, its furry face livid, and stomped the man into paste with his big feet. Quick as a snake, Jael snagged a fallen blade, wickedly curved, and opened the last man’s throat. Grateful for the breathing space, he let Einar yank him to his feet.

“How many of yours are left?” he asked.

“Twenty or so. You?”

He skimmed the room, then answered, “Eight or so, I think. Have you seen Dred?”

“There she is.” Einar pointed across the devastated hall.

“Just in time, too.”

She had more men than they did, but it wasn’t enough to conquer all of Priest’s territory. They would be hard-pressed to hold this room. Pure wrath rose in him.
If Silence set us up to fail, so she could get her hands on me, I’ll strangle the crazy bitch with my bare hands.
Dred lifted an arm in a victory sign, but he could see by her pale, strained face that she was on her last legs. A lesser individual wouldn’t have had the grit to get out of bed at all after the wounds he’d healed. Not that Jael felt the best, either. It took a while to regenerate that much blood. He’d be dizzy and light-headed for weeks.

Worth it.

For a few seconds, it looked like her men might be enough to turn the tide. He spun his knife and braced himself for another bloody round. Then more of Priest’s men surged in, trapping them from all sides.

“What the hell,” he said. “Ready to do some killing?”

Einar pulled out his axe, created from two soldered pieces of metal and some fabric braided around the haft for a makeshift grip. The thing was huge, like he could behead three people in a single swing. Jael took a wary step back. Though he believed he and the big man were on good terms, that thing could totally kill him. And as it turned out, he wasn’t ready to go.

“If it ends here, it does,” Einar said with a shrug. “I’ll die with a blade in my hand. Could be worse.”

“Could be better. Like on top of a pretty girl.”

For some reason, the big man laughed so hard at that, he almost dropped his weapon. “Ask Dred about that, why don’t you? Get her take on it. Provided we survive.”

Before he could ask—and he wanted to—the next wave was on him. Dred’s men weighed in, but they were just so damned outnumbered, even with the ferocity of Katur’s small contingent. The aliens were furious about something, but he had no idea what. It wasn’t like the Rodeisian was in the mood to chat as he dropped an enemy on his head. A tentacled thing was actually eating one of Priest’s men, and that actually made a dent in the fanatics’ stoic assault. A few of them stumbled backward, giving Jael the opening he needed.

He swept in, slicing hamstrings in a low roll, then he came up on the other side to spike knives into their chests. Neat placement, too. They died, but it wrenched the blades out of his hands when they fell.
That’s the problem with elegance. Stop showing off.
There were just too many enemies to be particular about how they died.

Across the room, Dred swung her chains like a dervish, opening great gashes wherever they landed. Her men had the sense to give her plenty of room, and Priest’s people were unable to penetrate her guard. But he could see as her gaze met his across the room that she knew—it was a lost cause, a hopeless fight, and yet she did not lay her weapons down as more of Priest’s people poured in behind the others, a seemingly endless stream.

Nearby, Einar chopped off a man’s head. It bounced across the floor, tripping another, and Jael kicked him in the chest as he went down. The blow was fierce enough to crush his sternum, not a clean death, so he found a shiv, poorly made, but good enough to take the zealot’s life. He didn’t watch the light leave the other man’s eyes—too many other souls to serve.

He was tiring, though.
There are too many. We can’t hold.

Though he hadn’t been here long, he understood there could be no surrender. No quarter asked or granted. Which was why the territories usually limited themselves to skirmishes, not full-scale raids. The potential for devastation and annihilation was too probable to make war a wise endeavor. But the alliance between Grigor and Priest was diabolical and inexorable.

Sometimes, with a desperate gamble, you lose.

Five Queenslanders dropped, thinning the numbers. More of Priest’s men surrounded Dred, for now stymied by the brutal whirl of her chains. But she was weary, too; the fight to get this far had probably taken a lot out of her. Einar seemed to notice at the same time, and, with a nod, they fought toward her as one. For a few seconds during that quiet look, it was like he could read the big man’s mind—and Einar wanted nothing more than to die at the Dread Queen’s side.

At first, Jael was too busy fighting for his life . . . and carving a path toward Dred to notice the jaws of the trap had closed.
With us as bait.
He didn’t see or hear them arrive—not surprising with the confusion of the battle and the constant cries—but Silence’s killers were slicing the enemy from behind, as promised. They were quiet and brutal, and the Abaddon faithful had no hope. They fell between the desperation of the Dread Queen’s men, and the quiet, lethal cuts driven by Silence’s followers. He had never seen such efficient killing, as though these mute prisoners knew exactly where to place a blade, down to the millimeter.

The battle took mere moments after that. Even the faithful lost heart when they realized they were fighting on two fronts. Jael fought on alongside Einar, and by the time the last of Abaddon’s defenders fell, he was standing beside the Dread Queen, with the big man on her other side. Neither of them reached to steady her.

She planted her feet and waited as the Speaker came toward her. “The compact has been honored. Now we will search this whole territory and find that cowardly Priest.”

Dred nodded. “Please convey our compliments to Silence. Her plan worked.”

Not without some heinous casualties from the Queenslanders.
But Jael imagined that Death’s Handmaiden wasn’t overly concerned with body count. In fact, she might have planned in order to sacrifice more souls for her master’s glory.

“I’ll lead my own search party,” Einar said then.

Dred nodded, but she didn’t offer to go with the teams. Instead she propped herself against the wall, looking unconcerned by the carnage. He was supposed to believe she was stone-cold, unmoved by her losses or the gobbets of meat, the huge puddles of blood, and all the bodies. Tam would be proud of her iron face, but Jael recognized the truth of her. She wasn’t the Dread Queen at her core.

An hour later, a short man with gray hair stumbled into the ruined hall, guided by Einar’s palm on the back of his neck. He wore red robes that were stained nearly black in places, tattered at the hem. And his eyes, his eyes shone with pure madness, etched in evil. Jael had seen some crazy bad shit in his day, but this man?
Mary.

“You cannot kill me,” Priest was babbling. “I’m a god. I’m immortal. I will
rise
.”

The big man glanced at the princess in chains for permission, hefting his axe suggestively. Jael expected her to nod and give him the go-ahead to serve as her executioner. Instead, she put out a hand and took the weapon from him. Her green eyes were like chips of jade in her pale, bloody countenance.
This
was the face of the Dread Queen.

“Kneel,” she commanded, and the command had an inexorable weight.

Not only did Priest drop to his knees, so did other men in the vicinity; two belonged to Silence. The Speaker frowned at this.

In a single swing, she took her enemy’s head. The crowd roared.

And Jael fell a little in love.