Authors: Gary Gibson
There was no sign of Honey dew, so Remembrance felt sure the traitorous security chief had already made his escape. The floor of the restaurant now looked more like a turbulent sea than anything else, waves of shuddering motion cascading through the monster’s body that nothing could possibly stand upright on.
Remembrance took flight once more, sailing over Bourdain’s head, his wings brushing against first one side and then the other of the cave. The monster’s mouth was beginning to close, slowly cutting off the one remaining sliver of fading daylight as the steel poles that had been propping the mouth open began to buckle and snap. Remembrance shot through the narrowing gap between the rows of stubby teeth, feeling them scrape against his wings as he tumbled through.
He slammed into a cave wall just outside and looked back, glimpsing Bourdain and Kapur, wide-eyed disbelief on both their faces as the maul-worm’s lips finally clamped shut right before them with a final breathy exhalation.
He stared in disgust as the maul-worm’s body suddenly peeled itself away from the walls of the cave that had sheltered it for centuries, transforming into a giant, pale tube of writhing flesh that wriggled backwards into the depths of the mountain, its body scraping noisily against the surrounding rock as it went.
You still have Honeydew to deal with,
Remembrance reminded himself.
Right now, staying alive was still his number-one priority.
Somewhere out there, beyond the mouth of the cave, there was an entire world of enemies, citizens of a rival Hive that he suspected had just developed an overwhelming desire to see him dead. Fortunately he still had Moss’s knife firmly gripped in one hand, with his shotgun and pistol secure on his harness within easy reach.
He took a moment to think and to assess the damage so far. He didn’t know how bad the wound on his back was but, since he’d managed to fly his way out of the maul-worm, it probably wasn’t much more than a flesh-wound. Sheer terror had overwhelmed any pain he might have felt. There were biomonitors built into his harness, but all they told him was what he already knew, that he’d lost some blood and was suffering from severe stress.
Unfortunately, however, he was still losing blood. Every time he reached behind him and between his wings, his hand came away wet and slick, and he didn’t have any medical patches handy.
However, the current state of peaceful détente between the two Hives meant that his own Hive of Darkening Skies was allowed to maintain a small, albeit token, military force on Ironbloom. Remembrance activated a harness-mounted emergency beacon that would help them locate him – and, given what he now knew, certainly bring that state of happy détente to a rapid end.
Remembrance peered out from the gloom and saw that the batteries of defensive weapons were now pointing
towards
the mouth of the cave, rather than away from it. The Darkwater war-dirigible that had brought him to the mountain was now floating barely a few metres above the ledge that lay immediately beyond the cave mouth, a looming silhouette with the bright lights of the city’s highest towers reflected on the polished under-surface of its gondola.
My Queen of Darkening Skies. I am ever your faithful servant, but this unworthy one prays for some very heavily armed back-up, and soon.
Remembrance heard just the faintest shout as he peered out from the cave, and a moment later the ground right in front of him exploded, blasting a crater out of the smooth rock. He cried out and stumbled backwards, falling over sharp-edged rocks deeper within the cave entrance as a rain of gravel came pouring down. Pain lanced through his back, between his wings, just as he heard a loud rumbling from deeper inside the cave . . .
There wasn’t time to think. Remembrance took flight at once, spreading his wings and soaring out of the cave entrance and into the open air beyond. He could barely maintain height in the thin mountain air, and was supernaturally aware of the automatic weaponry tracking him as he flew straight towards the war-dirigible.
He passed over the heads of several Bandati security agents scattered across the mountaintop, all clad in grey weapons-harnesses. He also caught sight of Honeydew on the ledge and to one side, recognizable by his distinctive wing-patterning.
His flight sent him slamming hard into one of the war-dirigible’s several close-packed gas cells and he immediately began to claw his way up on top of them, gripping onto the tough netting that held the cells in place. He caught a glimpse of more Immortal Light agents leaning out over the side of the gondola suspended below and now peering up at him, their rifles unsheathed.
Remembrance kept climbing until he was on top of the gas cells, while angry chittering sounded from below. They weren’t going to shoot at him while he was on the dirigible itself.
Probably not, anyway.
He crawled to the edge of one of the gas cells and looked back down, just in time to see the maul-worm explode from the mouth of the cave.
For something that had been so sedentary for most of its life, the monster moved with remarkable speed, its parted jaws letting out a scream of pain, or anger, carried on a gust of its rotten breath. It slammed down on top of some of the unwary Immortal Light agents who had been waiting for Remembrance himself. He watched in a daze as a few of them, taken too much by surprise to even begin to escape, were swallowed up in the creature’s vast mouth.
Clearly somebody still had the gumption to take command, because a moment later the dusk skies lit up as a storm of directed fire fell on the creature. It reacted by ramming into the side of the war-dirigible. Remembrance scrambled backwards, terrified both of being swallowed up by that enormous mouth and of being targeted if he abandoned his perch.
The dirigible rocked beneath him, and he heard screams and angry shouts from below. Then, suddenly, the craft jerked hard and started to drift away from the mountainside.
It took Remembrance a moment to realize that the maul-worm had knocked the war-dirigible loose from its moorings. He raised himself carefully to try and catch a glimpse of what was happening back on the mountainside. What he saw was the maul-worm writhing across the wide ridge, as shells, bullets and beams of directed energy slammed into it, tearing it gradually apart. Part of its enormous bulk lifted, slamming into one of the mounted gun platforms, pushing it over the rim of the ledge to tumble down the cliffs below in a furious avalanche of metal and sheared rock. The two Immortal Light agents who had been manning it went with it, caught up in the debris.
The bombardment had worked, albeit at enormous cost to Honeydew’s agents. The worm grew still, and Remembrance saw that it was finally dead.
He scrambled back along the top of the war-dirigible and away from the ledge, hopping from gas cell to netted gas cell, wondering how long he had before Honeydew sent the gondola’s crew up to kill or capture him.
The war-dirigible was beginning to tack around now, as it was steered back towards the mountainside. Remembrance hoped the crew was sufficiently indispensable that Honeydew wouldn’t focus his remaining fire on the veering craft. He started to work his way down the vessel’s side that was facing away from the mountain, gripping tightly onto the tough netting as he edged slowly down towards the gondola suspended beneath.
He had deactivated Moss’s knife and slid it through one of the spare loops of his harness. He next unsheathed his shotgun and swung down and onto the lip of the gondola itself.
He saw now there were six Immortal Light agents manning the dirigible, whereas he’d been hoping there wouldn’t be more than one or two. All six of them turned at once, clicking in surprise, and began to unsheathe their weapons from their harnesses. As one of them came rushing towards him, Remembrance took him out with a single shot.
A bullet spanged off the gondola, right next to one of Remembrance’s feet. He re-sheathed his shotgun and grabbed hold of a gondola cable, swinging himself out over the drop below and then rapidly pulling himself back up on top of the dirigible, to the sound of loud and angry chittering from the spot where he’d been a moment before.
He glanced down in time to see one of the remaining crew-members aim a shotgun up at him. The shot went wide, but it spurred him to ignore the numbness spreading out across his body from the wound between his wings, and climb quickly out of range.
By the time he’d pulled himself back up on top of the dirigible, a flickering blackness was manifesting at the edge of his vision. The frozen mountain air was too thin for him and that, combined with his injury, put him in serious danger of passing out soon.
He looked back over the side of the craft and spied a train of robot cargo blimps far below. They were moving in a steady line along the valley floor, following the contour of the river as they made their way towards the heart of Darkwater.
The valley slipped out of view as the dirigible swung back around, bringing the ledge – and Honeydew – closer and closer.
One of the gondola crew tried climbing up on top of the gas cells, clinging onto the netting with one hand while reaching for a gun with the other. Remembrance responded by unsheathing his own shotgun and getting off a shot first. Though he missed, it was enough to make the crew-member change his mind, and he quickly disappeared back out of sight, but not before letting out a series of foul-mouthed clicks.
Remembrance replaced his shotgun and pulled Moss’s knife loose from his harness, turning it in his hands for closer inspection. It was a vicious-looking thing, and hard to keep a grip on, having been designed with a larger-handed species in mind. He tested it cautiously, holding it in different ways until he felt he had some kind of reasonably firm grip. He then switched it on, holding it out from his body. The weapon jerked in his hand as he activated it, vibrating with a low buzz.
He leaned down, touching the blade to the skin of the gas cell he crouched on.
The effect was dramatic. A great rent opened up beneath him and he quickly moved back along the length of the cell, slicing as he went, the knife hardly jerking at all as he cut. The fabric the cells were made of was extremely tough, and designed to withstand high-impact rounds without tearing or breaking, but Moss’s blade slipped through it and the surrounding netting with astonishing ease.
Remembrance hopped over the gap between neighbouring cells and did the same to the next one along. It didn’t take long at all before the dirigible began to list to one side, swinging away from the ledge yet again.
As he kept cutting, the war-dirigible started to turn at an increasing rate, while dropping fast. After a minute’s work, he’d cut four bags open out of a total of twelve, since there were two parallel rows of five gas cells, with two more placed at either end.
The more he cut, the more the dirigible began to tip at one end, making it harder and harder for Remembrance to maintain his grip. He soon found himself clutching one-handed at an uneven slope that was threatening to tip him into the empty air high above the valley.
He realized his mistake. He should have cut first one balloon at one end of the craft and then another at the far end to balance them out and keep the dirigible relatively level. But that was the kind of thing that only became clear with hindsight. All he could do now was cling to the tough netting surrounding the gas cells and hope for the best.
The war-dirigible shuddered violently and he almost lost his grip. Simultaneously he heard a horrible screeching and scraping as the underside of the metal gondola hit the rim of the rocky ledge. The dirigible tipped over even more as it mashed itself up against the mountainside, and Remembrance held on for his life. But after a couple of seconds the craft floated away from direct contact with the ledge, and immediately began to level up.
There were still angry clicks and hisses from the gondola below, but fewer than before, since some of the crew had been tipped out.
Remembrance caught Honeydew’s scent and realized belatedly that once the dirigible had sunk below the level of the ridge, he himself would present a much easier target. Peering over the side of one gas cell, he saw that Honeydew – along with his surviving security contingent – had manned the remaining gun platform.
Not good. Not good at all.
The ledge itself hove more and more into view as the dirigible dropped lower and lower. He stared numbly as Honeydew gesticulated wildly at his officers. The artillery platform then began to rotate on its mount, the bulbous barrel of its force cannon swivelling directly towards Remembrance.
He scrambled backwards, as far away out of sight of the turret as possible, as it looked like the gondola crew was dispensable after all.
A powerful blast of heat and light slammed into the side of the dirigible facing the mountain – almost exactly where he’d been only a moment before. A crunching sound from below was accompanied by screams, and suddenly the dirigible began to rise far more rapidly than it had been descending. There was the sound of something clanking and crashing about, growing rapidly fainter as the mountain fell away beneath him.
Half the gas cells were gone now. He looked over the side and caught a glimpse of the gondola tumbling down the side of the mountain.
He glanced quickly up at the clouds shrouding the mountain peaks, seeing faint wisps of cirrus that were suddenly looking a lot closer. He realized he had no choice now but to jump. He crawled to the side of what was left of the war-dirigible and threw himself far out into the cold, deep air.
At first Remembrance tumbled wildly, as the air was too thin to give his wings a grip. But he eventually managed to spread them wide enough so he could at least guide himself in the direction of the convoy of blimps he’d spotted a few minutes before, and simultaneously away from the mountain slopes.
The leading blimp, barely more than a dot at this height, was just passing between two of Darkwater’s tallest Hive Towers. The rest of them – no doubt slaved to the first – followed it between the towers in a snake-like motion.