Under A Winter Sun, page 29
Eirik raises the sword above his head, both hands around the hilt.
Ah, the Falcon. Famously bad move.
But even with that silly opening, there's no way I can get to Finn in time.
Then something stops Eirik. He flinches, and a deep shudder goes through his body. If it's the old Eirik fighting for control, or if the priest disrupted some control mechanism, I don't know, and I don't give a fuck either way.
I stretch from under the dead priest and close my fingertips around the pommel of Skallagrim's sword.
“Finn!”
I push it awkwardly across the floor.
Finn fumbles after the sword, as Eirik's blade swings down to split his skull. He gets his blood-slick fingers around the hilt and thrusts it through his brother's chest. Luck or skill, he impales the centipede and tears it out of his brother's flesh. The horrible thing shrieks at the tip of Windsong and goes into a frenzy of fevered thrashing. Then it locks into a clump and dies.
Eirik grunts in pain and something else. It could be relief.
Finn pulls the sword from Eirik's chest, and the dead centipede falls to the floor with a dull clank.
Eirik's knees buckle, and he collapses over his brother. Finn rolls Eirik over on his back with an effort. The younger brother is still alive, but he can't survive with the gaping wound in his chest and spine.
I run over to them but slip in the blood. I come skidding up to the giants on my knees as they say their goodbyes.
When Eirik sees me coming, he looks over.
“Still alive, little man.”
A pained smile flickers across his lips.
“You should have killed me when you had the chance. It would have saved me some pain.” He groans. “I underestimated you, Perez. Maybe you stand a chance against Geirmund.”
He coughs blood in my face.
I hope he doesn't carry any infectious diseases.
“Geirmund.” His face contorts into a grimace of disgust. Like he got a mouthful of rotten flesh. “That fucker tricked me. It's he who controls the army. Kill him, and they all die.”
He reaches out to me with one great bloody hand. “Stop him. For all our sakes.”
I grab his hand in both of mine. It's too big to hold, but I hope he understands the gesture.
“I'll try.”
I squeeze his thumb like a child would an adult. He squeezes back, but there's no strength left in his body. His hand drops away, splattering my leg with blood as it flops to the floor.
The brothers clasp hands and put their bloody foreheads against each other.
“See you in Valhalla, brother,” Finn says.
“I'll save you a seat, big brother.”
Eirik closes his eyes and dies.
“Touching, but we've got a job to do here,” Jagr interrupts over my shoulder. “We need to destroy that reactor.”
She gestures at the raging fire.
I get up and clap Finn on one massive shoulder. “Come, brother. Time to go.”
He turns to me. Tears roll down his rough bloody face and I realise I've never seen my friend cry before.
“He was my brother, Asher.” Finn never calls me Asher. “And I killed him.”
“That wasn't Eirik you killed. It was a zombie, controlled by that wanker, Geirmund. Your brother died when Geirmund tricked him to accept that bug. Find Geirmund and make him pay for what he did to your brother.”
Finn's jaws clench in resolve. “I find the fuck, and I carve the Blood Eagle on him.”
I don't know what he's on about, but knowing Goliath customs, the Blood Eagle is something terrible and bloody, and I can't blame him. Geirmund deserves whatever horrible end he gets.
“Sounds good to me. Soledad, is that the reactor?” I point to the contraption far above.
“Yes.”
“And how do we get up there?” I search the chamber. There is no access ladder.
“We don't.”
I frown. “So, how do we destroy it?”
“Simple. We blow the supports.” She points them out to me. The reactor is supported by three massive beams, stretching from the floor. They curve inwards with the walls and attach to the sides of the reactor. That thing is huge. It must weigh a thousand tonnes.
It hurts my eyes to look at the light, even with the visor and my visual suppressors.
“Good thinking. Tell us what to do.”
* * *
Two minutes later, we have attached explosives to the beams. To prevent anyone from disabling them after we leave, we rig them to go off on contact. Soledad flips a switch on the remote and red lights ignite on the devices.
“Engaged.”
I give her a thumbs up.
There's a minute change in the ambient lighting, and a deep rumble echoes through the chamber. All lights except the writhing fire of the drive core go out. Shit.
Nothing is ever simple in my life, so I can't understand why I thought things would go according to plan this time.
It's like I'm the hero of a cut-rate pulp novel.
“Asher Perez.” A deep, sensuous voice reverberates through the air. The deep bass frequencies make my molars ache.
“Naglfar,” I acknowledge. “You know my name.”
“We have met before.”
“We have?”
“You knew me by another name then.”
I squint. “Is that you, Mimr?”
“That was once my name.”
“I thought we killed you.”
“I transferred my consciousness here before you detonated the bomb.”
The massive comms-spike Braden detected.
“So that's why you let us have that delightful chat?”
“Yes. It was unfortunate you had destroyed my primary link with the outside world. If not, I would have had the bandwidth to both upload here and kill you. You were lucky.”
“We didn't destroy any links.”
“Yes, you did, Asher.”
Ah.
“Bifrost?”
“Yes. That bridge was full of optical wires that connected me to the planet's relay stations.”
Jagr jabs an elbow into my side. “Still think it's a terrible idea to nuke things?”
I ignore her.
“So, we blew up the Galahad, a priceless historical landmark, and the only clue to a centuries-old mystery, for nothing?”
“Yes.”
“Great. Now what?”
“You can't detonate those bombs.”
“You can't do Jack shit about that. If you had the means to stop us, you would have. I guess you didn't count on someone sneaking aboard your ship.”
“Yes, that was … unconventional.”
“Having problems with the erratic nature of humans? That tired old trope?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, boo fucking hoo. You're not stalling us this time, Naglfar. We're out of here.”
I head for the exit at a brisk trot with the others in tow.
“Please.” There's actual pleading in its voice now. “Stay a while. Stay for ever.”
Now, where have I heard that phrase before? We ignore it.
Before we reach the double door, it slides open, and there's Geirmund the Cunning. Next to him stands Berengar the defiler, and stepping out behind them, one on each side, are the Wolf Twins.
Goddammit.
The surrounding air reverberates with the laughter of the ship. “You were too slow, Asher Perez,” the Naglfar thunders.
We might have taken Berengar on his own, but this is more than we can handle. Damn it. And we were so close.
“What have we here?”
Geirmund cackles with obvious glee. “Impressive.”
I don't wait for him to go into a full evil overlord monologue. I raise the Paladin and fire a controlled burst into his face. The heavy thump of the rifle echoes around the chamber.
One of the Twins dives in front of Geirmund and takes the burst square in the chest. The shredder bullets make a grisly mess of him, and he splashes all over the floor.
I can't tell which twin it was, and I don't care. The only good Wolf Twin is a dead Wolf Twin, has always been my motto. His centipede scratches around in the gore on severed legs.
I put a bullet through it, and it explodes most satisfyingly.
Geirmund stabs a long, gnarled finger at us. “Kill them,” he shrieks.
The long shawl falls from his shoulders to reveal the biggest and ugliest centipede yet. It covers his entire back. I watch in fascination as it unfurls long, spindly legs and extends them like skeletal wings from his back. He looks like an angel of hell.
There's no time to admire the thing.
Berengar and the surviving twin rush us. Jagr, Soledad and Tyrus raise their Paladins to cut them down, but Finn runs into their line of fire.
He lifts Skallagrim's great black sword as he charges.
Tyrus raises a hand. “Hold your fire.”
Finn and the enemy Goliaths collide and go down in a pile, and Geirmund is left exposed behind them. I make a run for him over the wrestling Goliaths.
“No,” the old bastard screams as I grab him by the throat.
The wings of the centipede stab down, but they are not fast enough. There's only slight resistance in the tissue as I dig my armoured fingers into his flesh and close them around his windpipe. I give it a yank and tear it out. The spiky legs of the centipede glance off my armour. One of them slashes my cheek open.
“What?” I ask. “Cat got your tongue?”
He claws at his ruined throat while blood gushes everywhere and a horrible bubbling wheezes from his chest.
He tries to scratch my eyes out, but I bat his hands away and grab him by the face with both hands. I push with all my servo enhanced strength and there's a meaty crunch as his skull cracks.
I put the Paladin under his jaw and blow his spine out along with the centipede, and his body goes limp. The wings fall lifeless to the ground.
He's still impossibly alive, but that suits me perfectly.
I drag him mewling toward the raging fire with the limp wings trailing behind us like the veil of a vile bride. It's time to test Eirik's theory.
We reach the edge, and I gaze down into the abyss. Far, far below, the raging fire branches into five arms, feeding into the titanic engines.
I raise Geirmund high into the air. Even though he's old and bent, he's still a Goliath, and his feet dangle against the edge.
“Goodbye, arsehole.”
He rasps something that could be nooooo and I hurl him backwards across the gulf into the fire.
There's a brief flash of energy, instantaneously whipped down and torn apart as the fire consumes his body. His flesh reverts into its constituent atoms and adds to the flow of energy pouring into the great engines.
I wipe the gore from my hands and turn around, hoping to see Berengar and the remaining twin drop dead.
No such luck.
Fuck.
Who's running this shitshow? No matter.
After we blow this damn ship and send the Goliath army back to hell, that will be an academic question.
Jagr, Soledad and Tyrus battle the Wolf twin. He throws them off as an elephant throws off attacking lions, but just like lions, they pounce again. Jagr and Soledad have their machetes out, and there's a lot of blood. It's an epic fight.
But their struggle is nothing compared to the battle between Berengar the Defiler and Thorfinn the Skullfucker.
Theirs is a fight that's been waiting to happen since the dawn of time. They were born for this moment. The two greatest warriors in the known universe at long last get to measure their strength against each other.
This is the archetypal battle between good and evil.
Not that Thorfinn Wagner is good, by any definition of the word. I've seen my friend commit heinous acts of barbarism before, but they are nothing compared to what he's doing to the Defiler. And he gets as good as he gives.
The skalds will write songs about this battle, and the Goliaths will sing them around their fires for all eternity. But they will only ever sing them after their children have gone to bed, such is the viciousness of the fighting.
Jagr and Tyrus trip their Wolf twin and their struggle continues on the floor. Soledad raises her machete above her head and buries it deep in his neck. Tyrus and Jagr struggle to hold the raging Goliath down while Soledad yanks the blade from side to side. She slices the Goliath's spinal cord and any links the centipede has inserted into his flesh.
In seconds, his body lies still, and Soledad tears her weapon free in a shower of blood.
She may be a grumpy bitch, but she is great to have on your team in a fight.
I don't care. I only have eyes for the headline event.
Back and forth they rage across the chamber, trading cuts, blows, and kicks. They both get the upper hand only to lose it again, over and over.
Finn gets the Defiler close to the edge, only to be pushed back by a well-aimed kick from Berengar. The Defiler gets Finn in a chokehold, only to have it broken by Finn's fist to his face.
It looks like they will fight forever, but they can't.
Their blades are long gone, and they have resorted to hands and feet and teeth. They are both slick with blood and their fingers can't find purchase. It's come down to a contest of who can hold out the longest, and without the powered armour, Finn would not have lasted this long. Not after his battle with Eirik the Fair.
If we somehow survive this shit, Finn will bitch to his dying day about not beating Berengar bare-chested.
Then Berengar tilts his head back and roars at the heavens.
Blood froths at his nostrils as he breathes harder and faster. Oh, shit. He's going into a berserker rage.
If Finn is going to stand a chance, he has to end this now.
Finn knows what's coming and rushes the Defiler in a desperate move, only to slip in the blood and fall.
He pulls the Defiler with him, and they crash to the floor. They are both on their knees now, grabbing, slipping, punching weakly.
Finn pokes a finger into Berengar's eye, but the Defiler merely grunts and swats Finn's hand away. It trails sticky fluid, and Berengar slams a fist into Wagner's face in retaliation.
I can no longer recognise my friend behind the torn and swollen flesh. The only thing assuring me it's Finn is the grin on his face.
It's the joy of fighting and killing that shines so brightly inside Thorfinn Wagner. I've seen no one who enjoys killing as much as he does.
Except for Berengar the Defiler. His grin is even wider.
Finn is first to give in.
He plants one fist on the floor, slipping and sliding in the blood. Berengar gets behind him and wraps a arm around his neck.
With a mighty grunt, he hauls Finn to his feet and drags him toward the edge. Finn realises what's coming and steers their steps to the side.
He kicks off against the floor, picks up the pace and slams Berengar back-first into one of the support beams.
Right into the jury-rigged bomb we planted there.
With an ear-shattering boom, the bomb detonates and plasters Berengar the defiler all over the adjacent wall and floor. The explosion throws Finn through the air, and he comes to a sliding stop a few metres in front of me.
Jagr, Tyrus and Soledad struggle to their feet.
“Was that …?”
There's dread in Soledad's voice.
I lay the priest on the floor and scramble over to Finn.
The blood makes the floor a little too slick and I crash into him. He doesn't even notice.
He lies face down, and I roll him over on his back. The carcass of the once great Berengar the Defiler falls off him in chunks.
He's still alive.
He may never hear again without aid, but he's breathing and even raises one armoured hand to me.
I grab it and lean in close.
“Finn, you won,” I shout in his ear. “You did it. Berengar is dead.”
“Dead.”
Finn smiles through his mangled face. It will take some serious bone and tissue restructuring to make him even a shadow of his normal ugly self again.
But he won't need to look pretty after this. The legend earned by killing Berengar the Defiler and Eirik the Fair in the same battle will make him the most celebrated Goliath in history.
Jagr leans in over my shoulder. “Is he all right?”
I smile. “Incredible, but yes, I think he is.”
For once, please, can things go my way?
That's when we hear it.
A sound like a dragon howling in pain reverberates through the chamber.
Something moves up above, and I raise my eyes to the drive core in trepidation. The destroyed beam is twisting, ponderously coming away from the wall, raining shards of hypercarbon over us.
Bolt after bolt snaps free and the entire leg comes crashing to the ground. I grab Finn by the neck of his armour and haul with all my strength. If it hadn't been for the blood making the floor slick, I could never have dragged him fast enough. I get him into cover in the entrance an instant before the support hits the floor.
Jagr dives out of the path of another crashing slab.
She misjudges the move and goes over the edge.
Soledad throws herself after Jagr, but she is too far away. A jagged twenty-metre section of hypercarbon crashes down on her.
There's no way she could have dodged that.
“Perez.” It's Tyrus. “A little help here.”
He is lying at the edge, holding on to Jagr's hand.
A glance at the reactor tells me it's not coming down on our heads just yet.
I lean Finn against the wall. “Coming.”
I climb through the rubble to reach Tyrus.
Together we haul Jagr back up over the edge.
“Fuck,” is all she manages as we roll her on her back.
“You're welcome,” Tyrus says. I give him a thumbs up.
“Where's Soledad?” Jagr looks around with fear in her eyes.
“She went down under that.” I point to the pile of rubble.
“No, Pip, no,” Jagr screams and crawls over.
She tears pieces of the beam away, and there is Soledad. All we can see of her is her head and one arm.
“Pip, can you hear me?”
Soledad's fingers move feebly, and she raises her head to look at Jagr.
