Chris Wooding: Retribution Falls

Crake replaced the whistle, then leaned out of cover and unleashed a wild salvo of pistol fire. His targets yelled and pointed fearfully, then scattered for cover, throwing themselves behind sacks and barrels that were waiting to be loaded into the warehouses.

‘Ha!’ Crake cried in triumph. ‘It seems they don’t doubt my accuracy with a pistol.’

An instant later his hair was blown forward as Pinn’s Skylance tore through the air mere feet above him, machine guns raking the street. Barrels were smashed to matchwood and several men jerked and howled as they were punched with bullets. The Skylance shrieked up the street and then twisted to vertical, arrowing into the clouds and away.

‘Yeah,’ said Frey, deadpan. ‘You’re pretty scary with that thing.’

The dockers had all fled inside by now, leaving the way clear for the combatants. Macarde’s men were at the edge of the landing pad, fifty feet away. Between them was a small, two-man flyer and too much cover for Frey’s liking. The smugglers had been shocked by Pinn’s assault, but they were regrouping swiftly.

Frey and Jez began laying down fire, making them scuttle. One smuggler went down, shot in the leg. Another unwisely took shelter behind a large but empty packing crate. Malvery hefted a double-barrelled shotgun, aimed, and blew a ragged hole through the crate and the man behind it.

‘Silo! How we doing?’ Frey called, but the mechanic couldn’t hear him over the return fire from the smugglers.

‘Darian Frey!’ Macarde called, from his hiding place behind a stack of aircraft tyres. ‘You’re a dead man!’

‘Threats,’ Frey murmured. ‘Honestly, what’s the point?’

‘They’re trying to flank us!’ said Jez. She fired at one of the smugglers, who was scampering from behind a pile of broken hydraulic parts. The bullet cut through the sleeve of his shirt, missing him by a hair. He froze mid-scamper and fled back into hiding.

‘Cheap kind of tactic, if you ask me,’ Crake commented, having recovered sufficient breath for a spot of nervous bravado. He knocked the shells from the drum of his revolver and slotted five new ones in. ‘The kind of sloppy, unoriginal thinking you come to expect from these mid-level smuggler types.’

Jez peered round the side of the crates, looking for the man she’d shot at. Instead she saw another, making his way from cover to cover, attempting to get an angle on them. He disappeared before she could draw a bead on him.

‘Can I get a bit less wit and a bit more keeping your bloody eyes open for these sons of bitches coming round the side?’ she snapped.

‘She’s no shrinking violet, I’ll give her that,’ Frey commented to Malvery.

‘The girl’s gonna fit right in,’ the doctor agreed.

More of Macarde’s gang had moved up and taken shelter behind the two-man flyer. Crake was peppering it with bullets.

‘Ammo!’ Malvery reminded him.

Frey ducked away as a salvo of gunfire blasted chips from the stone floor and splintered the wood of the crates. Malvery answered with his shotgun, loudly enough to discourage any more, then dropped back to reload.

Jez stuck her head out again, concerned that she’d lost sight of the men who were trying to flank them. Despite her warning, her companions were still preoccupied with taking pot-shots at the smugglers approaching from the front.

A flash of movement: there was another one! A third man, edging into position to shoot from the side, where their barricade of crates would be useless.

‘Three of them over here!’ she cried.

‘We’re a little busy at the moment,’ Frey replied patiently.

‘You’ll be busy picking a bullet out of your ear if you don’t—’ she began, but then she got shot.

It was a white blaze of pain, knocking the wind from her and blasting her senses. Like being hit by a piston. The impact threw her backwards, into Crake, who half-caught her as she fell.

‘She’s hit!’ he cried.

‘Already?’ Frey replied. ‘Damn, they usually last longer than that. Malvery, take a look.’

The doctor blasted off two shots to keep the smugglers’ heads down, then knelt next to Jez. Her already unhealthy pallor had whitened a shade further. Dark red blood was soaking through her jacket from her shoulder. ‘Ah, girl, come on,’ he murmured. ‘Don’t be dying or anything.’

‘I’m alright, Doc,’ she said, through gritted teeth. ‘I’m alright.’

‘Just you stay still.’

‘Haven’t got time to stay still,’ she replied, struggling to her feet, clutching her shoulder. ‘I told you they were coming round the side! Where’s the one who . . . ?’ She trailed off as she caught sight of something behind them, coming down the cargo ramp, and her face went slack. ‘What is that?’

Malvery turned and looked. ‘That? That’s Bess.’

Eight feet tall and five broad, a half-ton armoured monstrosity loomed out of the darkness into the light of the morning. There was nothing about her to identify her as female. Her torso and limbs were slabbed with moulded plates of tarnished metal, with ragged chain mail weave beneath. She stood in a hunch, the humped ridge of her back rising higher than her enormous shoulders. Her face was a circular grille, a criss-cross of thick bars like the gate of a drain. All that could be seen behind it were two sharp glimmers: the creature’s eyes.

Jez caught her breath. A golem. She’d only heard of such things.

A low growl sounded from within the creature, hollow and resonant. Then she came down the ramp, her massive boots pounding the floor as she accelerated. Cries of alarm and dismay rose from the smugglers. She jumped off the side of the ramp and landed with a rattling boom that made the ground tremble. One gloved hand scooped up a barrel that would have herniated the average human, and flung it at a smuggler who was hiding behind a pile of crates. It smashed through the crates and crushed the man behind, burying him under an avalanche of broken wood.

‘Well, she’s cranky, alright,’ said Frey. ‘Good old Bess.’

The golem tore into the smugglers who had been sneaking round the flanks, a roaring tower of fury. Bullets glanced from her armour, leaving only scratches and small dents. One of the smugglers, panicking, made a break from cover. She seized him by the throat with a loud crack and then flung his limp corpse at his companions.

Another man tried to race past her while her back was turned, but she was quicker than her bulk suggested. She lunged after him, grabbing his arm with massive fingers. Bone splintered in the force of her grip. Her victim’s brief shrieks were cut short as she tore the arm from its socket and clubbed him across the face with it, hard enough to knock him dead.

The remainder of Macarde’s men suddenly lost their taste for the fight. They turned tail and ran.

‘What are you doing?’ Macarde screamed at them, from his hiding place near the rear of the conflict. ‘Get your filthy yellow arses back there and shoot that thing!’

Bess swung around and fixed her attention on him, a deep rattling sound coming from her chest. He swallowed hard.

‘Don’t ever come back here, Frey, you hear me?’ he called, backing off a few steps as he did so. ‘You ever come back, you’re dead! You hear me? Dead! I’ll rip out your eyes, Frey!’

His parting shot was barely audible, since he was bolting away as he delivered it. Soon he had disappeared, chasing his men back into the tangled lanes of Scarwater.

‘Well,’ said Frey. ‘That’s that.’

‘She up and ready, Cap’n!’ Silo hollered from the top of the cargo ramp.

‘Exquisite timing, as always,’ Frey replied. ‘Malvery, how’s the new recruit?’

‘I’m okay,’ Jez said. ‘It went right through.’