'Fire behind us and fire in front,' said Purity.
'And ever was it thus.' Jackaby lowered himself into a sprinter's starting position, and then shouted at the other bandits protecting the gantry. 'Roll all the bodies off the path. I will need a clear run.'
'Thank you, Jackaby.'
'No,' said the bandit. 'Thank you, my queen. It has been my honour to serve you a second time.'
Purity spilled one of her dead fighters off the walkway, taking the corpse's trident first. 'How much time will you need?'
Jackaby stared up at the dark rotating singularity. 'About five million years' worth.'
'I'll buy it in the blood of our enemies.'
'Sell it dear,' one of the Bandits of the Marsh was yelling. 'Sell it dear!'
Purity hardly heard as she jabbed back at the snarling, hissing horde of slats breaking against the torrent of her fighters. This was violence in its rawest, dirtiest, most brutal form, curses and screams, spittle and wounds being given and received. Purity wept as she slashed and thrust her way through the melee. Here was war.
And through this channel of carnage the emperor came striding, surrounded by his personal guard of giants, all wearing the same armour – glistening black shells with massive rippling muscles – as if they had skinned slats alive to make it. The armour gave its wearers incredible strength, adding force to the giants' already perfect flesh. The masters tore into the front ranks of the Bandits of the Marsh, shredding their own slat soldiers to get to the intruders, to protect the dark star ripping time to sate their race's appetites.
Behind Purity a blur was whirling around the gantry, becoming a wall of fire underneath of the Army of Shadows' dark rotating ball; the agonized doppler-shifted scream of Jackaby Mention a shocking drone echoing around the moon's core.
Here was war.
Commodore Black knocked the side of his stolen slat pistol against the hangar door, as if that would do any good. He had discovered that the weapon took three seconds to recharge between shots the hard way, and now he was limping where a wounded slat had torn at his leg.
'They're loading the bomb inside Starsprite,' said Coppertracks, the sharp sight of his vision plate magnifying the scene inside. 'If the slats have activated the gate…'
Then they only had mere seconds left to stop the slaughter of all the steammen.
Molly looked at the crystal rotating inside her pistol barrel, the air steaming around it. The Army of Shadows' damn heat agitation guns were intended to be handled by something of a slat's weight; she needed both hands to lift and point hers. Oh, for a good honest Jackelian purse pistol. Still, at least she was capable of holding one. Poor Lord Rooksby, with his broken, corrupted flesh, could only attack like a beast.
Molly pulled her heavy pistol up, looking at the force moving about their ship. 'So many slats.'
And so much for surprise.
Coppertracks was powering through into the hangar, desperation and panic adding speed to his treads. Molly stepped out of cover and sent one of the slats tumbling off its feet with her first shot, counting the seconds to her next one.
The last desperate charge of humanity and its allies had begun.
Molly was halfway through the hangar, racing through a hail of fire-bolts with Commodore Black by her side, cursing, when a stray shaft of energy severed the stays tying a steep rise of crates to a wall. An avalanche of heavy cases came crashing down towards the four of them.
One of the Bandits of the Marsh seized the lever to seal the door into the core of the iron moon – whether to buy more time for Jackaby Mention or to shut out the final terrible screams of his death rattle was not certain. The man needn't have bothered. The bandit Purity had released from a stone circle had gone beyond a blur, beyond a circling wall of flame, beyond the beat of time… and as two time fields that should never have co-existed collided, the rotating monster at the moon's core was compressed, tentacles of dead star-stuff stretching far outside the range of the magnetic guns beating it into submission. Time tore in two competing directions at once, the passage to the past punched by the Army of Shadows' singularity storming against the time field Jackaby's streaking form was whipping up, both bleeding together in the present – a paradox too far for the poor mangled fabric of reality – and the passage's door was sucked off into the core, walls of relativity and matter twisted beyond endurance.
Bandits, slats and their masters in the passage were drawn screaming into the raging maw at the moon's core, hands and talons flailing and digging at the corridor walls, the field of war turned into a mad solitary scramble for survival in a single instant. They tried to hold on despite the terrible quaking as the iron moon's orbit shifted. A flying body bounced off the opposite side of the passage, hitting the wall just above Purity's head and scrabbled onto the same instrument panel she was trying not to lose her grip on. The force of the dead star dragged the figure fumbling down alongside her. It was Watt, the young cobbler's face bleeding badly from a gash on his forehead.
'I told you that you would have been better off staying on the u-boat,' Purity called.
'I bet they sunk it,' Watt yelled back.
A struggling hissing slat flew past Purity and Watt; Purity's fingers clinging desperately onto that instrument panel on the red rusted wall.
Sliding through the broken melee fell the emperor, his giant's frame still enclosed by his slimy living armour. It wouldn't buy him even an extra second in the maelstrom being worked inside the core, not now the deadly singularity his people had looted had been unseated. He was skating down the floor, his hands digging desperately into bandits and his own followers, only succeeding in loosening their holds and sending slats and men toppling towards hideous termination.
The emperor flailed past Purity and Watt, grabbing hold of the edge of a side corridor just down from their position, trying to scramble up into it, but the draw of the singularity was too great even for the emperor's might; the incredible pressure drawing him back down. His bellow sounded over the roar of the singularity. 'Is this how it ends?'
'Every plague burns itself out in the end,' called Purity. She reached out to Watt's back and tore off the wax-paper wrapped parcel hanging there. Her shoes. And she hadn't even got to see them. She held her hand out, aiming the parcel at the emperor. 'Given time.'
As she opened her fingers, the parcel was torn out of her hand by the energies below, arrowing down the corridor, hitting the emperor's hands and dislodging him. Screaming, the emperor was sent spinning away into the Kals' creation. His people had consumed the ancient civilization of Kaliban whole; now it was the turn of their slave race's creation to consume him. The emperor's body buckled and bent, becoming a red brume as every molecule burst asunder and merged with the temporal rage of the singularity.
'A bit of a bloody waste,' shouted Watt. 'I could have unstrapped my wooden leg and given it to you for that…'
Purity shook her head. 'No, they were the best pair of shoes I ever had.'
'You got the best I ever made,' Watt yelled back.
Purity felt the increasing pressure of the singularity bearing down on her; sweat rolling off her and Watt's palms and pulled into the chaos of the core. She and Watt were going to last only seconds before they joined the emperor in his death beyond time. Purity tried to ignore the screams of the fighters and the surviving Jackelians being dislodged and sucked away, the deaths of her brave fey boys and girls.
The emperor's last words mocked her. Is this how it ends?
Purity and Watt exchanged glances and both lost their grip at the same time, falling into the light together.
Becoming the light.
Coppertracks' voicebox gave vent to his anguish as he saw what the slats had done to Starsprite, the half- steamman craft's innards lying spilled across her cabin. 'Vandals! Wreckers!'
The looking-glass gate was fused with the inner hull of the craft. No way to cut it out without risking the mirror's destruction. Poor Starsprite, she had been defying the Army of Shadows to the end. Trying to protect her half-brother Coppertracks and the people of the metal.
