Stormblood, стр. 144
We heard the heavy rumble of artillery fire echoing around us. ‘Juvens wasn’t kidding about taking out a few of the Suns,’ Katherine muttered.
‘Sounds like he’s enjoying himself,’ I said over a pulse-pounding explosion. The words were barely out of my mouth before the corridor sputtered into darkness and flaring bursts of light from enemy barrels flashed in the gloom, bullets pinging off my armour. Yells as we returned fire, something heavy and wet thudding to the ground. My fingers twitched, my heart thundering. A squad of cultists armed with flamethrowers were charging towards us. Bulkheads locked down behind us. ‘Grim!’ I screamed down the channel. ‘Close the door in front of us. Now!’
The transparent door slammed down. Not fast enough. A cultist had slipped through, a roaring eruption of fire streaming from his flamethrower and enveloping Arya, the crackling heat so fierce I felt it through my suit. Arya’s arms flailed and she screamed as she toppled backwards, her suit turned into a blackened shell. The fire whiplashing sideways us as the cultist swerved towards us, but Vanto ducked under the immolating stream, shields flickering as he cut the cultist down. Arya was unmoving, smoke rising from her suit. Only the five of us left.
No time to mourn now. We pressed on in a five-man formation, punching through bulkhead after bulkhead as Grim disabled traps, only to reactivate them when the Suns tried to flank us from behind. Limbs aching and soaked in sweat, I checked the HUD. We were almost there. The next bulkhead led directly to Jae’s base.
We were about twenty metres away when chainglass barricades began sealing the entrance, the start of a razorstorm flickering to life. Jasken was already contacting Juvens to help take the barricade out. But by that time, it’d be too late for Compass. There was only one thing to do.
Cut the head off and the body falls.
Explosions rumbled and distant screams swelled as I turned towards the closing barricade.
‘Vakov! Don’t you dare!’ Kowalski snapped. The others turned around towards me, puzzled.
‘They’ll kill you, Vak!’ Grim echoed through the comms. ‘Don’t do this! Vak!’
But I had to. I couldn’t risk throwing anyone else into the meatgrinder. Too much blood had been spilt today. Too many good men and women lost because of my brother and the Suns.
I’m sorry, Katherine. I’m sorry, Grim.
I’m sorry, everyone.
I broke into a run; moving faster than I ever had in my life. Gunfire drowned out my friends yelling my name. I didn’t even glance back. If I did, I might stop.
This ended here.
I raced for the narrowly closing hatch winking above me, leaping up the scaffolding and propelling myself up. Lining myself up just right, I stabbed the emergency eject and the armour threw me past the barricade and through the flickering razornade. I landed hard and heavy, rolling to a stop as the gate sealed me inside with the most dangerous woman in the Common.
48
There Will be Blood
I felt the cold first. Freezing, icy cold, creeping to every part of my unarmoured body. I suppressed a shiver, my stormtech spiking as I swept down the hall. My breathing began to slow and I found myself in a half-completed observation deck. The floor was hard, utilitarian spacedecking, but the walls were skinned in pure asteroid rock. The granite-coloured surface had been crudely chiselled back, so the wall looked like overlapping clusters of dark grey spears, about to come raining down. Spacesuits and EVA packs were webbed to metal surfaces. Wrap-around viewports revealed the rough curve of Compass’ outer surface. Men were hooked into makeshift battle stations and data feeds trickled down a wall of flexiscreens in bright spasms of colour while secondary screens broadcast the tsunami of chaos below.
Jae wore a vintage dress patterned with bold curlicues, her hair let down in waves. I could hear her conversing with the Jackal through her commslink, checking on progress from some secondary safehouse. She was standing with Sokolav in front of an incongruous spherical box on a tripod, interlocked with whirring black gears and crawling with internal machinery. Twisted streams of cables erupted out of the device like pythons, plugged into a mass of stormtech canisters. The device was all hard, alien edges and I knew, without knowing how, that Jae was using it to contact the Shenoi.
Artyom was standing next to her.
My hands tightened into fists. I should have hated him. The stormtech wanted me to hurt him for the web of lies he’d spun. The grief he’d caused all of us. It wanted me to kill him along with everyone else.
But I couldn’t do it. I was not my father.
Artyom might be taller and wider than Jae, but she dwarfed him and everyone else in the room with her presence. I gripped my handcannon hard enough to break it. One shot. That’s all it would take. All this could end right here, right now.
I stepped forward. Then I remembered who wasn’t there.
Hideko’s electropole jabbed into my side. My muscles seized up. I tried to fight back but the electrocution came again, the voltage twice as high. My legs lost interest in holding me up and I toppled with a loud thud, my handcannon skidding out of reach.
Everyone snapped around at once. A splinter of a smile appeared on Jae’s stony visage, as if she’d expected nothing less. ‘And the dog returns to his master.’ She was like the mountain ranges I’d grown up around: gentle from a distance, but vast and full of unknown