Exiles in Arms: Night of the Necrotech (11 page)

Rex stood over that unmoving heap, watching it with an expectant intensity, as though waiting for the other ’jack to resume its attack. Rutger yelled down, drawing its attention from the demolished Nomad. “Rex! Rex! Pull down the cage!”

Obediently, Rex climbed out of the pit. It started to reach for Rutger’s cage with the sparking hand that had been impaled by one of Bruno’s spikes. “The other hand. Use your other hand!” Rutger shouted.

Stretching upward, extending its arm to the limit of its reach, Rex was only barely able to touch the bottom of the cage with its still-functioning fingers. Rutger raised his feet from the floor, bracing himself against the sides of the cage. Sternly, he ordered Rex to hook its fingers through the bars on the floor.

While Rex struggled to get one of its fingers to reach, Rutger looked again on the carnage in the arena. The soldier in him struggled to find the fountainhead of the undead horrors. Something had to be controlling the bonejacks, something much more sophisticated than the decayed risen and murderous mechanithralls.

The answer to his question was almost right beneath him. Rutger found himself watching in morbid fascination as two bloated, cadaverous obscenities scuttled across the floor on spider-like assemblages of metal legs. There was an air of monstrous command, a force of infernal personality that seemed to exude from the smaller of the two creatures as it scurried along. Arcane runes swirled about the fiend, evidence of the sorcerous powers lurking within its corrupt flesh.

Before Rutger could see any more, Rex secured a grip on the cage. The enormous weight of the warjack snapped the supporting cable almost immediately. Fortunately for Rutger, as soon as his cage started to fall, Rex tightened its hold. The bottom of the cage became a twisted tangle of iron beneath the pressure of the warjack’s grip, but the man inside was unharmed.

“Set me down!” Rutger shouted to make himself heard above the rumble and hiss of Rex’s engine. He tried to orient himself, looking for the creatures he had seen.

The monsters, however, seemed to have vanished. At a word from Rutger, Rex wrenched the door off the cage, making a mockery of the extravagant lock the Radiz had used. Rutger scrambled out, again searching for the spider-legged undead. It was impossible the monsters could have disappeared.

Then he realized there was only one place the monster could have scurried to in such a short time. Rutger turned toward the fighting pit. Although Rex’s presence may have sent the sorcerous necrotech creature running, the screams of those its undead were still attacking made that a small comfort. He’d seen the eerie runes swirling around the smaller creature. It clearly had some arcane ability, perhaps enough that it didn’t even need to see the battle to give its undead their commands.

“Rex, the pit!” Rutger ordered. The Toro turned about, two strides bringing it to the edge of the depression. Rutger followed close behind. Down below, he could see the necrotech bustling about Bruno’s wreckage, prying pieces from the Toro’s hull with a huge vise claw. A diseased cry bubbled from the monster as it wrenched open the back of the steamjack’s dismembered leg. The necrotech dug into the satchel hanging from its shoulder, removed a dark, glistening object, and leaned down to insert it into the severed limb.

It was like watching a jackal pick at a carcass. Rutger glared at the unclean scavenger, but before he could order Rex to attack, something else rose from the pit, spraying the Toro with a stream of sludge. The warjack stumbled backward, its hull steaming where the acid filth sizzled against its armor.

The necrotech’s atrocious bodyguard came skittering up from the depths on a deranged confusion of clattering limbs. A discolored patchwork of what looked like flayed skin was stretched tight over a swollen, putrescent mass. Four mismatched arms hung from broad shoulders, each limb ending in a pulpy bulb of flesh littered with a jumble of stumpy fingers. The fat, flabby head seemed to bulge directly from the torso, its face a jigsaw of stitches and metallic plates. Monstrous, oversized optics bulged from beneath a lopsided brow, resembling nothing so much as the headlamps of a locomotive. A lipless gash of a mouth drooled inanely, sending a trickle of caustic filth burning down the creature’s bony jaw. Rutger’s insides went cold. He’d fought similar creatures on the battlefield and recognized the foul mechanisms integral to the Nightmare Empire’s bloat thralls.

As the bloat thrall cleared the pit, its array of arms brought the muzzle of a brass cannon toward Rex. Hoses and pipes ran from the back of the cannon into a valve sunk into the abomination’s gut.

Rutger quickly redirected Rex’s attack. The warjack, its hull still steaming from the first bath of sludge, lashed out with a sweeping swat of its arm. The obscene creature, for all its bloated bulk, lacked the weight and mass of something like Bruno. The force of Rex’s attack hurled the thing across the arena floor and up into the tiers.

Victory turned to ashes in Rutger’s mouth when the thrall came crashing down among the fleeing crowd. The undead horror burst when it struck, popping like some blood-bloated tick. The acidic ooze filling its innards sprayed across the mob in a searing shower. Shrieks of complete agony rose from the afflicted as the burning filth melted their flesh down to the bone.

The screams decided Rutger. The necrotech would have to wait. Right now, the priority was clearing the arena, saving people from being slaughtered.

Rutger raced toward the far wall. He could see the first Deathripper prowling around the fissure the undead had used to enter the Scrapyard. A second bonejack would surely be guarding the main entrance. Was there a third stationed at the back entrance? The Nightmare Empire was usually thorough when orchestrating an atrocity, but it was worth checking. Rutger was determined to deny them their massacre.

“Rex! Smash down that wall!” Rutger pointed to a section of the outer wall just below the level of the arcade. If his mental image of the Scrapyard’s floor plan was right, that wall would correspond to the side of the dry dock. From there, it would be only a short run to reach the channel. Mechanithralls and bonejacks had many strengths, but he’d yet to see one that could float.

Steam jetted from Rex’s vents in a furious growl. The huge warjack bent its shoulder toward the spot Rutger pointed to and charged. Rutger could feel the vibrations from the Toro’s feet rumbling through the floor. The few risen that tried to get in the charging ’jack’s way were bowled aside, tossed through the air like motes of grave dust. The entire Scrapyard seemed to shudder when Rex’s shoulder smashed into the wall. The ’jack stumbled back, its shoulder a crumpled mess.

Rex’s optics blazed angrily at the wall. The impact had cracked the surface but failed to smash a hole through it. Venting another steaming growl, the ’jack brought its fist pounding against the crack, widening it, spilling chunks of stone into the arena. Rex dug its fingers into the gap. With a tremendous pull, the Toro ripped down the barrier, sending a twenty-foot patch of the outer wall spilling into the arena.

“Here! Down here!” Rutger shouted up to the crowd in the arcade. He knew the chances of being heard were poor, but it would only take one person to lead the tide to safety. Waving his arms overhead, Rutger caught the attention of a man who had been pushed by the crowd almost over the edge of the arcade. The man paused in his scramble to regain firmer footing, watching as Rutger pointed to the hole Rex had made. The man nodded, shouted something at the mob in the arcade, then dropped to the arena floor.

First by twos and threes, then by the dozens, people leaped down from the arcade and fled toward the broken wall. Only a few risen moved to stop them. Most of the undead were still occupied with the unfortunates caught in the lower tiers. Rutger ordered Rex to strike down any of the undead that came too near the hole, but knew he couldn’t permit the warjack to stray too far. He couldn’t see the Deathripper guarding the main gate, but the one watching the fissure was all too visible. It stood there, clamping its jaws like a dog waiting to be unchained. Rutger dreaded the moment when the necrotech should grant its liberty.

Rutger glanced back at the fighting pit, wondering what insanity the necrotech was perpetrating down there. He wanted to go back and settle with the fiend, but to do so would be to leave the refugees helpless against any concentrated effort to block their escape. The mercenary shook his head. He couldn’t abandon even these people to such a fate. Much less when Taryn was somewhere among them.

Unless she’d already been dragged down by the Cryxians. The thought sent panic stabbing through him, a panic that swelled with each heartbeat. He searched the faces of the people streaming past him, hoping against hope that he would find her.

Renewed screams rose from the refugees fleeing past the main gate. Rutger craned his neck but could only make out a shifting of the mob, like a flock of seabirds moving away from the tide. Dread coursed through his veins as he considered what could be so horrible as to sway that stampede. He glanced toward the far wall, grateful to see the Deathripper still maintaining its guard.

When he turned back around, an even more profound gratitude swept over him. Rushing out from the crowd was Taryn!

The gun mage drove straight toward him, not even breaking her pace as she flung his weapon belt at him.

“You brought Jackknife!” Rutger marveled.

“And a friend.” She pointed back the way she came.

The refugees’ shrieks were louder now, the stampede slowing to a mere trickle as men scattered in every direction. Without the concealing wall of the mob, Rutger could see the abomination they had been fleeing. Loping forward, its jaws smeared with blood, its chassis spattered in gore, was the missing bonejack.

Taryn crouched down beside Rutger, reloading her magelocks. “See if Rex has any luck against that thing, because everything I throw at it just seems to make it mad.” She nodded at the corroded holes in the Deathripper’s jaw and knee. Smoke still rose from the injuries as Taryn’s spells continued to eat away at the bonejack’s structure, but the enchantment could hardly do more than slow it down.

Drawing his mechanikal sword from its scabbard, Rutger stepped in front of Taryn, putting himself between the gun mage and the enraged bonejack. The thing gnashed its jaws and sprang at him. Thumbing the activation rune in Jackknife’s grip, Rutger struck. The blow slashed across the Deathripper’s jaw, snapping cables and sending one of its tusks spinning through the air.

Before the bonejack could turn itself about and snap at Rutger, the monster was caught in a steely embrace. Rex’s arms tightened about the Deathripper’s hull, pressing it down, holding it immobile against the floor.

“Quick, outside!” Rutger shouted to the crowd. The survivors needed no further encouragement. They surged around Rex and the Deathripper, hurrying through the hole before the bonejack could break free. Rutger was going to invent some pretense to get Taryn to follow them, but one look at her told him nothing he could say would work. He knew that grim expression. She had given up as much ground as she intended to.

“Let’s try this again,” Taryn said, snapping close the breech of her second pistol. With a loaded magelock in each hand, she started toward the bonejack.

“Wait,” Rutger warned. He looked across the arena, shuddered when he saw that the other Deathripper was no longer standing guard at the fissure. He scoured the arena floor to see where the monster was. Instead he found a weird, uncanny sight. A parade of dismembered junk was flopping and crawling away from the pit. Bruno’s mangled arms, one of its crippled legs, and even the warjack’s decapitated head were shuffling toward them, creeping along by means of the cables hanging from its severed neck like some metal octopus.

As strange as the macabre march looked, Rutger was at a loss to see any menace in it until the crawling head toppled onto its side and rolled into the ruins of his cage. Instantly, head and cage vanished in a terrific explosion. When the acrid smoke cleared, a deep crater had been blasted in the floor.

“Necrotite bombs,” Rutger said. Now he knew the purpose behind the necrotech’s scavenging! The creature had been fashioning these hideous walking bombs, intending to unleash them against its enemies. He stared again at the crater the explosion had left behind. Bruno’s head had been the smallest of the necrotech’s scrap thralls. How much more explosive might the necrotech have packed into the others?

“At least they’re headed away from us,” Taryn said. Immediately, she appreciated the importance of that fact. “Morrow preserve us,” she gasped.

The mobile bombs were creeping away because they were moving toward the Scrapyard’s supporting wall. If they detonated there with anything like the same force as the first bomb, the whole place would collapse. Small wonder then that the necrotech had withdrawn the other Deathripper. Why worry about the opening when it planned to demolish the entire building before anyone could reach it.

Suddenly, from beside the two mercenaries, a cacophony of grinding gears and escaping steam sounded. They turned their heads in time to see Rex lurch up from the ground, dragging the Deathripper up with it. The bonejack flailed and thrashed in the Toro’s hold, struggling to free itself of the metal giant’s grip.

“Rutger, what is it doing?” Taryn asked as Rex carried the bonejack away from the wall.

“I’m not sure,” Rutger said, just as startled by the ’jack’s actions.

Rex took two more lumbering steps, then rotated its body to face the crawling scrap thralls. Smoke belched from the warjack’s stack as its steam engine strained to provide the power demanded by the effort ahead. Voicing an almost bestial growl, Rex hurled the bonejack at the scrap thralls. The explosion as the Deathripper slammed down into what had been Bruno’s leg shook the entire Scrapyard, sending beams and girders plummeting from the roof. The other scrap thralls vanished, caught in the premature detonation. A fog of dust and debris billowed through the arena, blinding and choking those who hadn’t yet fled.