Chris Wooding - The Ace of Skulls

He lifted his shotgun over his head and gave a hoarse bellow of exhausted triumph. The other men joined their voices to his, a rousing cry that lifted up to the battle-hammered skies above, where the great aircraft fought on in ignorance of what they’d done.

A small victory in the grand scheme of things, and won with great sacrifice, but it was a victory. It was a foreigner’s victory, Silo ’s victory, and all those cheers were for him.

Darian

His name was like the exhalation of a ghost, a hoarse whisper that came from all around him, seeping from the shadows of the Delirium Trigger ’s hold.

He stepped out from behind the metal pillars and into the cavernous central space. His pistols and cutlass were in his belt, but his hands hung by his side, palm up and empty.

‘I’m here,’ he said.

She stood there in the sick glow of the Azryx device, half in darkness and half in light. She was as he’d expected her, dressed in close-fitting black. A corpse-white head floated like an apparition above her shoulders, her hair hacked into clumps. Blood red lipstick was smeared across chin and cheek. She’d lost one of her contact lenses, and now her eyes were mismatched, one pupil black and huge and the other. .

The other had changed. Once that eye had been green. Once he’d known every fleck and flaw of it. But even in the uneasy luminescence cast by the swirling gases, he could see the colour had changed. It was bright yellow, an eagle’s eye. The eye of an Imperator.

Her sheer presence was oppressive. The air was heavy with dread, and his skin crept. The darkness beyond the pillars was full of furtive movements glimpsed from the corner of his eye. The steady drip of water from the ceiling had become sinister. Susurrant murmurings chased around the edges of the room.

Here was the dark goddess she’d always pretended to be. Here was the legendary terror of the skies, Trinica Dracken, the pirate queen.

But it wasn’t his Trinica.

— You’ve come to save her ~ breathed the voice. He heard a slow, croaking chuckle, the dry wheeze of something ancient and rotten. The mockery in the daemon’s tone slid off him. Usually, being near Trinica disarmed him, made him awkward and uncertain. Not now. He didn’t see the woman he loved, but the creature that held her, and he was filled with cold purpose, his will like the tempered edge of a blade.

He heard Crake and Kyne move up warily alongside. Balomon Crund wasn’t with them; he’d scurried off to the periphery of the hold, afraid of his mistress’s wrath. Crake pressed a thin metal collar into his hand. ‘Remember the plan, Cap’n,’ he murmured. ‘We can do this.’

Yes, the plan. Crake and Kyne would subdue her long enough for Frey to snap the collar round her throat. The collar would suppress the daemon and keep Trinica quiescent until they could get her to a sanctum and drive it out. If it worked. The last Imperator they’d tried that trick on had died in agony. Kyne had assured him they had a better chance this time: now they knew the Imperators’ frequency, he’d been able to tune the collar accurately. But the Century Knight wouldn’t lie, either. If it wasn’t suppressed correctly or destroyed quickly, the daemon in Trinica would kill her before they could get it out.

It was a gamble, and the stakes had never been higher. But Frey was a man accustomed to long odds.

Trinica lowered her head, her face falling into shadow, and a moment later the fear hit. Frey felt the weight of it push down on him. Freezing fingers clutched at his heart and panic coiled in his belly. He heard Crund scream from somewhere in the darkness at the edge of the hold. Crake’s amulet was useless; nothing could withstand the awful, crushing, maddening horror of the Imperators. His breath became short, and he took a step back in panic. He wanted to run, as far and fast as he could.

Then he felt a warm hand on his back, preventing him from moving any further. He looked across and saw Crake there, his friend. The daemonist’s eyes were calm.

‘You can beat it,’ Crake said. ‘It’s only fear.’

Frey took strength from Crake’s composure. If Crake could master it, he could too. The amulet was working; he could feel it now. The chill in his heart was the amulet, sucking at him. He took in a breath, blew it out through pursed lips, and felt himself steady. Crake nodded at him, and gave him a reassuring pat on the back.

‘There you go,’ he said.

Frey raised his head, and looked the daemon in the eye. ‘That the best you’ve got?’ he asked.

Kyne held up a metal sphere and pressed the stud with his thumb. A piercing shriek cut through the hold, and Trinica shrieked with it. She stumbled back against the Azryx machine, clutching at her head, pawing at the air. The sight of her in such pain would have been more than Frey could bear in other times, but it didn’t move him now. It was a necessary cruelty. Whatever it took to get that creature out of her.

Kyne and Crake moved past him, splitting up to take position either side of Trinica. Each had a cylinder in one hand, with a pinecone arrangement of small rods at the tip, linked by a cable to the cumbersome backpacks they wore. Frey had forgotten what they were called, but he remembered how they’d worked on the Iron Jackal. They could cage a daemon between them, but care was needed. If the operators didn’t stand exactly opposite each other, the daemon could slip out.

Kyne was still holding up the screamer with his free hand. Trinica thrashed and writhed and threw herself about; she slipped to the floor and scrambled back up again, a wild creature tortured. In the strange light it was like some hellish dance. As Kyne and Crake manoeuvred to get an angle on her, Frey advanced steadily, the collar open in his hand. He caught a glimpse of Crund’s frightened face by one of the girder pillars, before the bosun looked away. Crund couldn’t stand to watch his mistress’s suffering, but Frey didn’t have the luxury of mercy. He pushed his feelings down and shut them away tight. He’d do what he had to.

Kyne thrust out his arm, pointed the cylinder at Trinica and pressed the stud on it. She shrieked with new vigour, stumbling away from him as if repelled. But Crake was waiting on the other side with a cylinder of his own. Suddenly she was trapped, paralysed, straitjacketed by invisible frequencies.

Kyne tossed the screamer aside and took hold of the cylinder with both hands, struggling against Trinica’s efforts to escape. ‘Now, Frey!’ he cried.

Frey stepped towards her, the jaws of the collar ready to snap shut on her neck. Her mismatched eyes were fixed on it. Her face, the face he’d loved for so long, was contorted in fear. For a moment, the look she wore shook his resolve. What if he killed her? What if this collar was a death sentence as sure as a bullet to the head, and she knew it?

Well, what if it was? Better than this half-life, her body in thrall to a daemon. He knew what she’d have him do, and he loved her enough to do it. No matter what it cost him.

‘Now!’ Kyne said again.

He reached forward to snap the collar round her neck.

The Mane shell that exploded against the Delirium Trigger ’s flank was a big one, and it scored a direct hit. Even with all her armour, she shuddered violently and listed hard in the air. Everyone in her hold staggered with the impact. Crake threw out an arm for balance; the cylinders went out of alignment; the cage was broken. Frey saw the danger and lunged, but Trinica pulled her head back and the collar clicked shut on nothing.