The golem bellowed and shoulder-charged the gate at full pelt, crashing into it like a freight train. Wood splintered and metal buckled. The gate crashed inward; the bar that secured it cracked in half. That first blow almost destroyed the gate entirely. The golem pulled itself free and drew back one colossal fist to finish the job. With one mighty swing, the gate was torn from its hinges and fell backwards.
Now the way was clear, the Coalition soldiers flooded past the golem, and Silo was swept along with them. Inside was a circular courtyard surrounding the massive anti-aircraft gun, which sat idle, pointing uselessly at the sky. There were Awakeners in the courtyard, and some on the walkway on the inside of the wall. The Coalition soldiers ran in headlong, guns blazing.
Silo found himself in amidst a close press of men. Allies and enemies jostled him. A figure in a cassock appeared out of the crowd, and Silo emptied his shotgun into the man’s belly. Blood spattered his face. He wiped his eyes, got his vision back, and cracked his shotgun butt down on the crown of a merc who was facing away from him.
A few riflemen up on the wall sent bullets into the fray, but they were still being plagued by Zalexa Crome, and one by one they went toppling off to crash down on the heads of the men below. The golem wrenched the gate up off the floor and hefted it at a group of mercs who were shooting into the crowd from across the courtyard. It spun through the air, end over end, and though they did their best to scramble out of the way, their best wasn’t good enough.
Dynamite went off somewhere. Silo felt the force of it, saw a group of men thrown aside, Awakener and Coalition alike. A Sentinel fell at his feet, half his face purple with bruising, eyes so bloodshot there were no whites left. Silo pumped his shotgun. A Speaker in a white cassock came running at him with a knife. Silo fired, and the man was blown backwards, crashed into someone else and knocked them to the ground too. A Coalition soldier nearby screamed and fell. Maybe Silo had hit him; he couldn’t tell. All this shooting in close combat was dangerous, but he’d long gone past the point of being sensible. He killed, and killed, and that was all.
Somewhere in the middle of it all, he found himself searching breathlessly for targets, and there were none to be found. The gunfire petered out and fell quiet. Silo saw men falling to their knees, holding their hands up in surrender. There were desperate, disbelieving smiles on the face of the Coalition soldiers. Silo looked around and found Malvery near the gate, a smoking shotgun in one hand, supporting Ashua with his free arm. Ashua hopped on one leg, but she was alive, and holding a revolver of her own. They’d come late, but they’d been there at the end.
Silo stood there, chest heaving, his shotgun hanging loosely in his hand. There were perhaps twenty soldiers left of the seventy who’d begun the charge, and a handful of Awakeners, but in that moment it didn’t matter. He hadn’t let the Cap’n down. His crew were safe, and they had the gun.
He lifted his shotgun over his head and gave a hoarse bellow of exhausted triumph. The other men joined their voices to his, a rousing cry that lifted up to the battle-hammered skies above, where the great aircraft fought on in ignorance of what they’d done.
A small victory in the grand scheme of things, and won with great sacrifice, but it was a victory. It was a foreigner’s victory, Silo’s victory, and all those cheers were for him.
Forty-Four
Darian
His name was like the exhalation of a ghost, a hoarse whisper that came from all around him, seeping from the shadows of the Delirium Trigger’s hold.
He stepped out from behind the metal pillars and into the cavernous central space. His pistols and cutlass were in his belt, but his hands hung by his side, palm up and empty.
‘I’m here,’ he said.
She stood there in the sick glow of the Azryx device, half in darkness and half in light. She was as he’d expected her, dressed in close-fitting black. A corpse-white head floated like an apparition above her shoulders, her hair hacked into clumps. Blood red lipstick was smeared across chin and cheek. She’d lost one of her contact lenses, and now her eyes were mismatched, one pupil black and huge and the other. .
The other had changed. Once that eye had been green. Once he’d known every fleck and flaw of it. But even in the uneasy luminescence cast by the swirling gases, he could see the colour had changed. It was bright yellow, an eagle’s eye. The eye of an Imperator.
Her sheer presence was oppressive. The air was heavy with dread, and his skin crept. The darkness beyond the pillars was full of furtive movements glimpsed from the corner of his eye. The steady drip of water from the ceiling had become sinister. Susurrant murmurings chased around the edges of the room.
Here was the dark goddess she’d always pretended to be. Here was the legendary terror of the skies, Trinica Dracken, the pirate queen.
But it wasn’t his Trinica.
— You’ve come to save her ~ breathed the voice. He heard a slow, croaking chuckle, the dry wheeze of something ancient and rotten. The mockery in the daemon’s tone slid off him. Usually, being near Trinica disarmed him, made him awkward and uncertain. Not now. He didn’t see the woman he loved, but the creature that held her, and he was filled with cold purpose, his will like the tempered edge of a blade.
He heard Crake and Kyne move up warily alongside. Balomon Crund wasn’t with them; he’d scurried off to the periphery of the hold, afraid of his mistress’s wrath. Crake pressed a thin metal collar into his hand. ‘Remember the plan, Cap’n,’ he murmured. ‘We can do this.’
Yes, the plan. Crake and Kyne would subdue her long enough for Frey to snap the collar round her throat. The collar would suppress the daemon and keep Trinica quiescent until they could get her to a sanctum and drive it out. If it worked. The last Imperator they’d tried that trick on had died in agony. Kyne had assured him they had a better chance this time: now they knew the Imperators’ frequency, he’d been able to tune the collar accurately. But the Century Knight wouldn’t lie, either. If it wasn’t suppressed correctly or destroyed quickly, the daemon in Trinica would kill her before they could get it out.
It was a gamble, and the stakes had never been higher. But Frey was a man accustomed to long odds.
Trinica lowered her head, her face falling into shadow, and a moment later the fear hit. Frey felt the weight of it push down on him. Freezing fingers clutched at his heart and panic coiled in his belly. He heard Crund scream from somewhere in the darkness at the edge of the hold. Crake’s amulet was useless; nothing could withstand the awful, crushing, maddening horror of the Imperators. His breath became short, and he took a step back in panic. He wanted to run, as far and fast as he could.
Then he felt a warm hand on his back, preventing him from moving any further. He looked across and saw Crake there, his friend. The daemonist’s eyes were calm.
‘You can beat it,’ Crake said. ‘It’s only fear.’
Frey took strength from Crake’s composure. If Crake could master it, he could too. The amulet was working; he could feel it now. The chill in his heart was the amulet, sucking at him. He took in a breath, blew it out through pursed lips, and felt himself steady. Crake nodded at him, and gave him a reassuring pat on the back.
‘There you go,’ he said.
Frey raised his head, and looked the daemon in the eye. ‘That the best you’ve got?’ he asked.