Into the Storm (36 page)

“No!” Culpin shouted, diving aside just before the bomb detonated, showering the maps with burning Menoth’s Fury.

The club came crashing down. Madigan barely got out of the way, but it didn’t matter. The club smashed through the grate, and the whole world opened up around him as his footing disappeared. Madigan fell, but the grate was already rising up to meet him at an odd angle. He hit and began to slide over the edge. The interior of the Great Dome seemed to reach forever into the bowels of the world below.

“Hold!” Culpin shouted at the warjack. It immediately stopped, club ready to end Madigan’s life.

The Storm Knight hung on for dear life as Culpin came out from behind the control panel, shielding his face from the heat. The alchemist glared at Madigan. “You simpleton. You just condemned your own city. I was using them! I was intending to destroy every quarter filled with Protectorate next! I intended to rid this kingdom of its internal sickness
and
its external foe all in one blow. All you’ve accomplished was saving the lives of the very fanatics you’ve been fighting . . . But you’re too late to get what you came for.” Culpin reached for a red lever. “Witness the end of Leto the usurper king!”

“No!” Madigan shouted.

Culpin laughed. “Don’t worry. I can rebuild it.” He pulled the lever.

Cleasby was reading the instructions pinned to the corkboard on the wall as fast as he could, but it was hard to pay attention to engineering diagrams when a giant with two flaming swords was crashing about the room battling an Ordic duelist.

“Thornbury, grab that valve. Turn it when I tell you.” He looked over and found that Thornbury was staring at the fight. It was hard to blame him. The two master swordsmen weaved back and forth through the forest of pipes. “
Thorny!”

Thornbury jumped. “Sorry.” He rushed back over. “What’s happening?”

The needles on the pressure gauges were all pegged red. “The holding tanks here are full of the alchemical mixture. It’s bubbling up, building pressure. If the gates are lowered the gas will be forced through Caspia’s pipes in a matter of minutes, and when they’re full, there must be some form of ignition—” A bell sounded from the machine. “That’s bad.”

“Bad? How bad?”

That bell had been a warning: the gate had been opened. The alchemical mixture was being forced into the palace district. “Shut up and turn that valve! Clockwise!” Thorny did. Cleasby grabbed another one and spun it hard. Then he reached down, took hold of a big brass lever, and cranked it back.
That should do it!
“Do the next one as well. Do as many as you can, as fast as you can!”

Thorny rushed to the next. “What’re we doing?”

“We’re dumping the main tanks.” Cleasby ran back and looked at the pressure gauges. The needles were dropping. “If there’s no pressure from the alchemical mix, it won’t be forced through the pipes in sufficient quantity to cause as much—”

“I get it! I get it! Where are we dumping it?”

“Uh, well . . .” Cleasby hadn’t thought that part through. He looked back at the instructions. He’d been focused on saving the palace and its surrounding quarter. More than likely it was going to pour back into the tanks below the Great Dome itself and then overflow into the Black River, which meant that as soon as Culpin set off his magical ignition system, this whole section of the dock district would probably be obliterated, but there was no use dwelling on that. “Just keep turning valves!”

Madigan pulled himself up the grate. He had to let go of his storm glaive so he could use both hands to get up the slick surface. The sword slid off the edge and disappeared. The Reckoner raised its club, and he had nowhere to go.

“I told you to hold.”

The Reckoner heeded its marshal, but it watched the Storm Knight through its glowing vision slit, waiting for the order to smash.

“You ruined it, Madigan. I don’t think you realized what a mess you’ve made of things.” Culpin walked up behind the Warjack, but he was smart enough to not get any closer than that. “I’ll accomplish what I told the Protectorate I’d do when I offered them my services to begin with. Their
honorable
hierarch turned me down, but luckily there were others with power in Sul far more pliable. As we speak, my marvelous invention is collecting beneath the most vital parts of Caspia. The palace will be destroyed, taking the usurper king with it. So, too, the Sancteum; the heart of the Church of Morrow, gone. The War Council? Gone. Any members of the Royal Assembly still in the vicinity? Dead. All those who conspired to cast down King Vinter, and all who’d bowed their heads to Leto afterward, all of them burned to ash and scattered on the winds, just like traitors deserve.”

“You’ll kill thousands.”

“I’d kill millions if I thought it would make a difference! This is for the greater good of Cygnar, after all. I’m looking at the broad view. Of course, a decade ago when I presented this plan to the Protectorate, hoping for a new home and funds to continue my research, the plan was to do this when they invaded Caspia, not when you invaded Sul, but things worked out. This way I got a good field test beforehand. That explosion in central Sul? That was done with a mere
five hundred gallons
of my mixture. Whereas I just released
thirty
thousand gallons
of it into Caspia.” Culpin clapped his hands. “Oh joy, I can’t wait to see how it lights up the sky. It’ll be marvelous.”

Madigan pulled against the grate, struggling upward. His wounds left him unsteady. His legs were hanging off in space. The Reckoner watched him, waiting for the order to club the Storm Knight flat.

“I’d love to see the look on Leto’s face for the brief instant before the pressure strips the flesh from his bones. If the Protectorate were to start another war, Leto and his lackeys would die in a horrendous fire, but the invading Protectorate troops would all be killed when the pipes beneath their lines detonated as well. By their own mistake, most would reckon. Then King Vinter could return, triumphant, and his people would cheer as he rallied them around his banner, entered Sul, and destroyed the Menites forever.”

“Caspia would be destroyed.”

“It’s
old
. New is better!” Culpin spread his hands wide. “Imagine the modern city I could build in its place . . . But now I’m only going to blow up part of Caspia, so neither of us gets our way. Except for the Protectorate. I’m sure those backward, superstitious dolts will have a splendid time rooting like pigs through the ruin of civilization. Perhaps in another hundred years they’ll reinvent the sundial, or maybe the wheel.”

Though he couldn’t see any of them, Madigan could still hear his men fighting in the maze of pipes below, so maybe all wasn’t lost. “Vinter’s done. He’ll never return.”

“We shall see.” Culpin pointed to Madigan and spoke to the
’jack.
“If this man gets any closer, hit him with your club.” He then walked away to get a better view through one of the windows. “My alchemical solution is rather stable. It has to be at the correct density to detonate at its full potential. Any minute now the steadily increasing pressure of my mixture will reach its ignition point.” Culpin pulled out a pocket watch and glanced at it. “Hmmm . . . This is taking a bit longer than expected. I’d check my instruments, if you hadn’t just set them afire.”

CRASH!

The noise had come from the main floor. Madigan twisted around in time to see a huge chunk of the wall fall inward, followed by one
ugly
warjack. Headhunter had plowed right through the militia guarding the building, squishing them underfoot. Its huge blade swept through the building, tearing soldiers in half. Pangborn and Rains were right behind, shouting and firing their weapons.

“Up here!” Madigan shouted. “Shoot this ’jack!”

Rains heard him, grabbed Pangborn, and pointed. The ’jack marshal shouted a command at Headhunter. It swiveled toward the target.

It was as if time slowed down when the two warjacks saw each other. He knew it was impossible for a ’jack to actually have an
expression
, but Madigan could have sworn Headhunter got excited. It ran across the Great Dome, plowing through soldiers, pipes, and tanks, leaving a trail of blood and steam in its wake. Once it was within range, Pangborn shouted another command, and Headhunter’s massive galvanic blade rose, buzzing with charge. It fired, electricity forming an instant bond between the two warjacks, which then turned into a blast of sound that swept over them all.

He could
taste
the electricity.

The Reckoner stumbled back, crashing through the smoldering maps. Madigan held on as tight as he could as the grate shook under the impact, threatening to shake him loose to fall to his death.

“Destroy that ’jack!” Culpin shouted. “Destroy it!”

The Reckoner didn’t go to the freight elevator. Rather it went to the edge, missing Madigan by inches, and stepped off. It fell to the next landing with a terrible impact. Beams bent, and the interior pyramid of the Great Dome shuddered. It went off another floor and landed on the main.

Without hesitation, the two warjacks launched themselves across the space, crashing through anything helpless enough to get in their way. Culpin has said he’d rated each floor for an extra ten tons of stress, except with the two of them, there was closer to
thirteen
tons of angry warjack going at it. The interior structure of the Great Dome swayed as if it were experiencing an earthquake.

Madigan climbed. The wounds in his side and back had drained him of strength, but he found more and pushed on.

Headhunter’s blade crashed into the Reckoner’s chassis in a shower of sparks. The club came around and tore their Stormclad’s damaged shield arm clean off. Pangborn had to dive for cover as the huge arm flew past. Headhunter simply lowered its shoulder and rammed its body into the Reckoner. The Protectorate ’jack hit a water tank, which burst under the onslaught, and a wave swept through the running Menite soldiers, sweeping them from their feet.

Madigan stood up and shouted at his men below. “Sergeant!
Retreat!
Get the Malcontents out of here!” Rains signaled that he’d heard and began repeating the order. Madigan turned back to the thing that had brought him here.

Culpin was checking his pocket watch again, annoyed. “It should have detonated by now. Something has thrown off my calculations.” The arcane mechanik saw Madigan coming toward him and calmly drew a hand cannon. “I’ve no time for you.”

He fired.

The heavy bullet hit Madigan low in the torso. He stumbled but didn’t fall. Raising one hand to his abdomen, Madigan found a perfect round hole in the plate. Struggling to breathe, he took a halting step forward.

Culpin scowled at the pistol.

The pain hit then, piercing through his side, but Madigan kept walking. The armor hadn’t stopped the extremely powerful round, but it had slowed the bullet enough that it didn’t kill him on the spot. It would be enough.

“Damn you, Madigan! It’s too late. Even if my calculations are off, it’ll still detonate. You’ll see,” he sneered. “But you’re too stubborn to accept defeat, even when it’s obvious. Vinter was right about you. He must’ve known all was lost when he sent you to murder Hartcliff and his spawn, because a lesser man wouldn’t have had the stomach for it.”