Landfall (The Reach, Book 2) (44 page)

Iris had only briefly mentioned Emil’s quarters during the tour, but Talia remember well enough to find her way back there now.

Inside, she found both Capper and Emil with their backs to the door.

This is just too good to be true
, she thought with a grim smile.  She raised the gun.

“Sorry to crash the party,” she announced from the doorway, “but I think the three of us have some unfinished business.”

The two men turned slowly, Capper on his feet and Emil on his knees before a safe, and Talia saw enough in that first moment to piece together what had happened.  Capper carried a hammer from his beloved toolkit in one hand.  It was covered in blood, and Emil’s heavily scarred face bore a new gash down one side.  Crimson droplets continued to fall from it even now, splattering against his shoulder and arm.

“The whore,” Capper said flatly.  “It seems we caught up with you in the end.”

“Call me that one more time,” Talia said, pointing the gun directly at his face.  “I dare you.”

Capper smiled slowly at her.  “What are you waiting for?”

“Step aside,” she told him.  She glanced at Emil.  “I want him first.”

Capper glanced down at Emil, confused.  “Your leader here was just handing over his valuables,” he said.  “I’m sure you’ll have his undying gratitude for saving him.”

“He’s not my leader, and I’m not saving him,” Talia said.  “I’m putting a bullet in him.  Then it’s your turn, you dumb shit.”

Emil clambered to his feet shakily, his eyes fixed balefully on Talia.

“I could have blown your head apart a few minutes ago,” he said.  “Remember that.”

Talia felt hot tears begin to slide down her cheeks.  “You killed the only people in the world who mean anything to me, Emil.  If you wanted someone to experience the pain you felt, then congratulations.  You succeeded.”

She levelled the gun at him and slipped her finger onto the trigger.

She heard movement behind her and turned instinctively, just in time to see a short woman with jet-
black hair swipe at her with a glinting blade.  She fell backward, out into the corridor and the woman advanced, her movements lithe and surefooted.

“Diao-Chan!” came Capper’s voice from inside the room.  There was the sound of a scuffle and something breaking inside the room, and Capper grunted.  “Keep her alive.  She’s mine!”

Diao-Chan came nearer, and Talia fired off a round from the .22 that missed the target.  The next shot caught her in the arm, and Diao-Chan hissed and dropped back.  Talia kept firing, hitting her two or three more times, and then Diao-Chan dropped to the floor.

Talia got to her feet and found her way back to the doorway, where she beheld a truly horrific sight.  Capper lay lifeless in a chair while Emil stood over him, heaving the hammer into his ruined and bloody face over and over, sending great chunks of flesh flying with each blow.  At the sight of Talia in the threshold he stopped and stared at her with a demonic look in his eyes.  It was the gaze of a man who had teetered on the precipice of psychosis for a long time and who had now gone over the edge, lost to the chaos that raged deep inside him.  Whether it was a by-product of finally achieving his revenge on Knile, or perhaps because he’d seen his beloved Skybreach being torn apart around him, Talia couldn’t be sure.

She only knew that there was no coming back for him now.  He was too far gone.

Emil came at her with a snarl, raising the hammer, and she fired the .22 in return.

The gun clicked once, twice.

Empty.

Then he was upon her, hammer whistling through the air at her face.  She was knocked backward and the .22 clattered out of her grasp, and then Emil was pulling at her hair, scratching at her face like a wild animal, grunting and gnashing his teeth.  She managed to grasp a handful of his blood-soaked shirt and swing him around and into the wall, but in the process the hammer clipped her on the forehead and she went down, her head spinning.

Emil peeled himself away from the wall and drew in a ragged breath.  He looked down at her and spun the hammer in his hand playfully.

“If only Knile were alive to see this,” he gasped.  He raised the hammer and took a step forward.

“Emil!” someone called from behind him.  He turned, and then the corridor was filled with three deafening booms.  Emil was sent spinning to the floor as the bullets tore at his chest, and when he hit the ground he tried to raise his head again, but then slumped back down.

After that he did not move again.

Talia looked down the corridor and saw Silvestri standing there, gun in hand.  His eyes met hers and he slowly lowered the weapon.

Looking around at the carnage, he slowly shook his head.

“Hell of a day,” he remarked casually.

Talia breathed a sigh of relief.  “That’s one way of putting it.”

Silvestri noticed something at his feet, then nudged the spent .22 back toward her with the toe of his boot.  He gave her another of his trademark grins.

“I thought I told you to keep this thing close,” he said.

Knile somehow crawled and found his way behind a pallet of steel struts as the world fell apart around him.

The noise was intense, jarring.  Pulse round
s seared the wood and steel
in every direction, knocking over entire walls and even causing part of the structure to cave in nearby.  There was a low moaning sound, and then air blasted through the resulting hole in the ceiling, sending white powdery dust swirling in a nebulous, all-consuming maelstrom.  Knile raised his head and saw bursts of blue and red light through the cloud, like flashes of pigmented lightning, as the Redmen continued to pepper the area with pulse rounds.  One of the red patches grew brighter, and then Knile saw Lazarus lurch past as he sought cover.  He had activated some kind of visor or helmet and it now protruded from the shoulders of his suit, protecting his face and neck from the onslaught.

Knile glanced left and right, unsure of what to do.  In fact, he wasn’t sure if there was anything he
could
do.  He was at a distinct disadvantage in this fight, neither equipped with the weaponry, armour or training of those around him.  He still had his little bone shiv in his belt, but he imagined it would merely break apart should he try to ram in into the suit of one of the Redmen – that was assuming he could even get close enough to attempt it.

He couldn’t bury his head in the tablet to continue his hack of the Consortium network, either.  He had to remain aware of his surroundings, be prepared to run if that was required.

A thought occurred to him and he checked his wristwatch.  More than thirty minutes had elapsed now since the alert had been raised.  Roman’s procedure should be complete.  If Knile could somehow find his way out of the construction zone, he could collect Roman and get him out of there, perhaps descend to Gaslight where they could find safety.

You can’t do that to Lazarus
, he thought grimly. 
He needs your help.

There was a loud thump, and then two Redmen tumbled out of the gloom, their limbs intertwined with one another as they crashed through another wall.  The floor shook with the impact, and above Knile a large crack materialised, threatening to tear the roof asunder.  He began to move again but had to stop and turn back as the glow of the third Redman came bounding toward him.

He squirmed behind a desk, and then a moment later
a body slammed onto the floor beside him, sending up another gout of dust in its wake.  Knile began to struggled backward, but then saw that the Redman was dead, his neck at an unnatural angle.

Luckily, it was not Aron Lazarus.

Two down.  One to go.

A few metres away lay the dead Redman’s pulse rifle.  Knile suffered a brief moment of indecision, whether to stay out of sight or take this opportunity to arm himself, and a split second later he surged forward, throwing caution to the wind as he leapt out to claim the weapon.  Then he hefted it in his hands.

The thing was
heavy
.  Knile had never used a pulse rifle before, and now that he held one in his
grasp
he could only wonder how anyone ever managed to wield them effectively.  He struggled and raised the rifle to a roughly horizontal position, then began to stagger forward.

There was a grunting sound ahead, and the red glow returned, and Knile braced himself.

Can’t see a damn thing
, he thought. 
Is this the good guy or the bad guy?

There was a crash followed by a splintering sound, then a dull thud.  The red glow suddenly seemed to split in two as the Redmen parted.

One of them was now lying prone on the floor.

Knile kept walking forward, trying to wipe the grit out of his eyes with one hand.

He heard Scole’s voice again.  “You’re a disgrace, Laz,” he said, breathless.  Knile still couldn’t make out which Redman was which.  “You don’t deserve to wear that armour anymore.  So, tell you what.”  He coughed.  “After I blow you away there’s gonna be nothing left of you but a few bits of meat inside that armour.  Then I’m gonna take it and hang it on the wall of the Reach and let the crows pick it clean.  How do you like that?  Your last vestiges left for crowbait.  That’s all that you deserve.”

The Redman who was standing bent to pick something up, and in that moment the dust cleared enough for Knile to see that it was Scole.  The man was in the process of collecting a pulse rifle from the floor, and Lazarus lay at his feet, dazed.

Knile gritted his teeth and pulled the trigger.

The pulse rifle bucked in his hands like a wild beast and the shot went high and to the left.  Scole looked up, surprised, then his fingers closed around the rifle on the floor.  As he brought it up, Knile fired again, too soon.  The muzzle was still too high from the first shot.

Time seemed to have slowed.  Scole almost had him in his sights.

Knile bit back on the compulsion to fire wildly, knowing he had one more chance to make the shot count.  He dropped the muzzle, gripped the rifle firmly with two hands.

The next shot hit Scole in the chest, sending red sparks flying and knocking him backward.  Knile continued to advance, took another shot, aimed for the same place.  Scole cried out in pain and surprise.

Knile pulled the trigger again and again, continuing to advance, almost right on top of the Redman now.  Scole had dropped his pulse rifle, and now he too lay on the floor.

Knile must have pumped fifteen rounds into him before he finally stopped.  As the smoke cleared from Scole’s armour, Knile saw that a hole had been carved in the breastplate, and there was a ragged, wet tear in Scole’s chest.

It was over.

Panting, Knile turned back to Lazarus, whose armour was looking almost as bad as Scole’s.  The helmet had been smashed and there was blood on his face, and the breastplate had been
scorched and looked ready to fall apart.

Lazarus blinked, trying to clear his head.

“You okay?” Knile asked.

Lazarus stared up at him, perplexed, then nodded.

Knile extended his hand down toward him.

“Come on,” Knile said.  “We’re not done here yet.”

43

Ursie felt van Asch’s hideous thought tendrils snaking after her, no matter how many twists and turns she took.  Even though she was stretching her body to its physical limits she could not seem to shake him, and worse, she had no idea where she was going.  Any second she might come to a dead end, and then it would be all over.  He would close the gap between them and use his proximity to crush her mind like it was an empty aluminium can under his boot heel.

Gathering a coherent thought in her head was not easy.  She was expending so much of her energy just trying to keep van Asch out of her mind that all other processes seemed to have ground to a halt.  She could not come up with a plan, a strategy to throw him off her tail, and she did not know of anywhere that would offer her safe haven.  Neither the Redmen nor the Consortium officials would have any interest in her plight.  Why would they?  She was basically a fugitive with nowhere to go, and that fact alone would likely result in her being sent back to Earth even if she did escape the grasp of Jodocus van Asch.