G reat, he groaned in his mind. As if things weren’t bad enough.
Turner walked away with the empty syringe, leaving Kane holding a wad of sterile cloth up to where he’d received the shot.
The bridge of Burke’s airship was wide and tall. The steel was grey-green and sterile.
Maur stood near the cockpit, where he watched the mostly reptilian pilot operate a complicated-looking network of handles, wheels and levers. Ronan, Sol and Marcus checked their weapons, while Burke went over schematic readouts of the area.
How did things get this screwed up? Kane wondered. We’ve been away from Thornn for what feels like forever. None of us expected that getting Cross back would be so damn complicated.
Or so costly. They’d lost Ash and Grissom, and now it looked like they were in danger of losing Black, too. And maybe even Cross himself.
Never really thought this was how things would end, he thought.
“ Kane?” Jade came and sat down next to him on the long and uncomfortable steel benches that ran along the back wall of the deck. The growl of arcane turbines filled the air with such noise she practically had to shout to be heard.
“What?”
“Are you okay?”
He looked at her. She was a gorgeous woman, far too alluring to be wrapped up with a scumbag like Klos Vago. H e knew what she really was: a cold-blooded criminal, an enforcer more concerned with a paycheck than with who she had to hurt to get it.
“What do you care?” he asked, and he turned back to the long window so he could watch the marsh.
She grabbed his hand until he turned to look at her.
“Because I feel like caring,” she said sternly. “Look, you and I started off on the wrong foot, b ut that doesn’t mean things have to stay that way.”
She was thin, practically a waif even in thick leather armor and armed with a veritable arsenal of knives and hex grenades. Her hand felt good in his.
“Decided to finally be nice to me now that we’re all marching to our death s, hu h? ” he grinned.
“ Try to stay positive,” she said. The way she said the words made it sound like she actually meant them. “ We ’ve made it this far, and from the sounds of things you’ve made it through worse. We should be okay… ”
“ Should be isn’t good enough,” he said. I want to live. I want Dani and Cross to be okay. God damn it, things were good before that mission into the Bonespire. I just want to go back to the way we were. “ Look, just… don’t try to make me feel bette r, OK? As things stand, we don’t have much of a chance of getting your bosses’ job done. Speaking of which… why are you still even here?”
“Excuse me?” she asked.
“What’s your stake in all of this? It’s not like you guys give a crap about Cross, or anything.”
“Burke hasn’t exactly offered to send us home,” she said plainly. “What else are we supposed to do?”
“You could s tay out of it,” Kane said matter-of-factly. “Mind your own business.”
“Is that what you’d do?”
“It’s what I’d do if I knew I wasn’t wanted.”
She gave him a wry smile.
“Did it ever occur to you that we may actually want to help?”
Kane looked into her eyes.
God, I want to believe her.
“You mean you and Sol?”
She hesitated, just for a moment, and nodded.
“Yes. Me and Sol.”
“No,” he answered. “Your interest in me extends only so far as getting Vago what he wants.”
Jade laughed. He could tell she was exasperated.
“ Ok,” she said. “ Never mind then, ” she said.
He almost stopped her from leaving, but he didn’t.
For a few minutes, while the rickety airship flew low over black waters and the sun started to set and they approached the ruined city-state of Voth Ra’morg, Kane sat alone. He longed for things to return to a place they never could. He was afraid, so afraid, because he knew this couldn’t end well, that more of them would die. A fist of pure fear slammed down his spine.
He would do what he had to do. He’d fight to his last breath to save his friends. But Kane knew they were already lost.
Voth Ra’morg was a shell.
The ruined structure came into view just as the sun set over the eastern horizon. Jagged stone walls and rusted steel towers glowed faint grey-gold in the light of the dying sun. B lack and icy marshlands surrounded the ruins. A thin and crumbling network of earth and wood en walkways provided safe passage across the dark bog. Tendrils of green m ist hovered just over the water, and wooden stakes surrounded the desolate city like a ring of black blades.
They weren ’t the first to reach the ruins: T he Revengers had beat en them there.
A large airship hovered just over the island, tethered by a mooring chain. Two smaller ships flew in a perimeter pattern around the structure. Both vessels were heavily armed with repeating cannons and arcane ballistae.
D ark war machines moved on the ground. The b lack juggernauts had massive iron wheels and swinging turrets, blade-rams and flame-cannons, and they cra shed through the laggard waters and flatten ed the mounds of earth and old wooden walkways in their path.
The vehicles moved quickly. D ark water burst skyward as explosions struck the ground. The air was riddled with machinegun fire.
The Black Scar invaders were under attack.
Kane moved to the window, stood next to the others and looked out at the scene. Ronan broke out his binoculars.
At first Kane thought Rake and his crew had run afoul of some natural creatu res in the area, or squatters who’d claimed the ruins. B ut he doubted the airship would have moored there if anything in Voth Ra’morg hadn’t already been dealt with. At worst, T he Revengers might have had to contend with tundra barbarians or Gorgoloth who roamed the area in search of plunder.
Instead, t he creatures who attack ed the Revengers were Troj — massive red-skinned humanoids with draconic faces, knotted muscles and heavy armor, thick swords and rifles as big as motorcycles. They were no swamp vagrants, but elite mercenaries, their loyalties marked by the slashed eye and fang sigils on their dark armor.
“Ebon Cities,” Ronan said.
“Damn it, they’re already here,” Burke said. “Signal the attack!”
Blasts tore the swamp apart. Mud and dirt exploded in bursts of black water. Troj raced through the swamp, nine-foot tall brutes that moved with alarming speed. T hunderously loud rifles pelted the dark iron tanks. The Troj moved fearlessly, well aware of their own near invulnerability, for t heir thaumaturgically modified metabolism healed most wounds with ease and they were bred to know n either pain nor fear. The fact that their barbaric minds were artificially infused with the latest military tactics and ordnance training made them all the more dangerous.
C reatures of equal size from Black Scar met t he Troj in battle. They were t all and gan gly undead with burn-black skin pulled taut against distorted bones, and their skeletal bodies were covered with thick body armor. The gaunt undead giants were armed with what Kane guessed were 20mm cannons.
Shells tore the marshy earth apart as the two ground forces advanced across the field. T he Troj mov ed towards the ruins, the undead defended it.
“Scarecrows,” Turner explained. “The first gift Rake accepted from Koth to seal the alliance.”
“Shit, there’s more, ” Ronan sai d. He’d turned his binoculars north.
A number of vampire warships drifted over the horizon, followed by a Coffin: a long and rectangular iron vessel that served as a troop transport for the Ebon Cities. Dark mist trailed the Wing of airships and paint ed the
