Chris Wooding - The Iron jackal

A trickle of sweat inched past his temple and down his stubbled cheek.

‘What’s it waitin’ for?’ Ugrik asked, but no one answered.

A low growl drifted out of the dark. A muzzled face slid into view, one half moist and glistening fur, the other dull metal. The shine of its mechanical eye was lost in the red glow of the flares, but its other eye was a black pit, and it fixed on Frey and filled him with horror.

‘Bugger this!’ said Ugrik. He raised his shotgun and fired one-handed. The blast echoed through the chambugh the er, among the tanks of silent Azryx.

If he hit anything, they couldn’t tell. The Iron Jackal had disappeared.

‘Don’t waste your ammunition,’ said Crake. ‘You can’t hurt it with bullets.’

‘Aye?’ said Ugrik, chambering a new round. ‘Well, I reckon I’ll try anyway.’

Laughter fluttered around the chamber. A woman’s laughter, the cold sound of Trinica at her most scornful. It was the final straw for Frey. Something snapped inside him: fear had finally driven him to rage.

‘Come on, then, if you’re coming!’ he yelled. ‘You think I’m scared of you, you ratty little mutt? Show yourself and I’ll stuff those bayonet fingers of yours up your stinking puppy arse!’

Ugrik cackled at that. Crake just looked horrified, as if making the daemon mad would somehow make things worse. But when a few seconds had ticked by, and nothing happened, he relaxed a little.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘ That didn’t work.’

The Iron Jackal flew at Frey, leaping into the light, bladed claws spread wide, jaws gaping. Frey threw himself aside, but his heavy pack made him clumsy. He avoided the bayonets, but some part of the daemon slammed into the side of the pack and sent him spinning. He tumbled and crashed down onto his back, jarring his spine against the heavy equipment. The cylinder fell out of his hand and rolled away.

He tried to get up and found himself helpless, lying on the ground like an upturned turtle. The Iron Jackal was turning around for another attack, slouched and terrible in the gory glow. Panic burst in his brain. He scrabbled for the cylinder, which Crake had assured him was his best defence, and found only the cable that attached it to the equipment in his pack. He reeled it in, but even as he started he knew it was too late, because the Iron Jackal was already racing back towards him and The boom of Ugrik’s shotgun made him shudder. The Iron Jackal was blasted away as if swatted aside by a giant hand. It skidded along the floor, out of range of the flares, and was gone.

Frey tipped over to his side and finally managed to get to his feet. Cutlass in one hand, cylinder in the other, he looked around wildly for the next attack.

Ugrik smirked at Crake. ‘Can’t hurt it, eh?’

‘You didn’t hurt it,’ said Crake. He was fiddling anxiously with the orb in his hand.

‘Where were you?’ Frey snapped at him. ‘You were supposed to stop that thing!’

‘It doesn’t work!’ Crake said, frustrated. He thumbed the button on the orb in his hand.

‘Check the wire on the battery pack,’ Frey told him, remembering his own experience in Shasiith.

‘The wire?’ Crake looked down at the battery pack on his hip. ‘Spit and blood! You’re right! How did you know?’

‘Wild guess.’

Crake began fiddling with it. ‘Nearly there. Just hold it off for a few seconds.’

‘ Hold it off?’ Frey cried, and at that moment it came again, jumping out of the darkness to land before him, hydraulic legs hissing with the impact. Frey felt his bowels turn to water as it loomed over him. It seemed to grow in the red light, swelling with each breath. Cables and mechanical tendons sewed through slick fur.

It swung a claw at him, and Frey’s cutlass reacted, darting out to parry. Sparks flew as the blade met the bayonets and turned them aside. His cutlass cushioned him from the worst of the jolt, but it was still strong enough to make him stagger.

The Iron Jackal attacked again, slashing at him with long, sinewy arms, pressing forward. Frey’s cutlass turned frantically this way and that, blocking again and again as the creature pounded at his defences. Each new blow struck more sparks, lighting up the snarling muzzle of the beast. Trinica’s black eye glowered madly at him.

He saw Ugrik off to one side, trying to get an angle on the beast, but they were locked too tightly for the explorer to dare a shot. Frey wanted to yell at him to fire anyway, because he couldn’t hold out, not against this inhuman savagery and strength. But he barely had time to draw breath.

Each time the Iron Jackal knocked his blade aside, the next parry was weaker. His arm was turning to rubber. Finally, the monster swept both hands at him together, a sheaf of bayonets, and the cutlass twisted out of his grip and went clattering to the floor.

Frey staggered, arm numbed by the impact. The daemon drew back a claw for the death-blow – and the air was filled with a high shriek, pitched just at the edge of Frey’s hearing but painfully intense. The Iron Jackal shrieked with it. It stepped backwards, flailing at the air, then tripped on a root that had broken through the floor. It crashed against one of the Azryx tanks, spilling its contents in a flood of liquid and a tangle of cables and withered limbs. Frey stared in amazement as the Iron Jackal found its feet and stumbled away from the tank, moving as if drunk.

‘The harmonic arc generators!’ called Crake. He was holding aloft the orb in his hand. ‘While it’s disoriented!’

It took Frey a moment to work out what he meant. In the chaos of the fight, he’d almost forgotten the cylinder in his hand, with its pinecone arrangement of rods at the end. He thrust it towards the daemon.

‘Not yet!’ Crake shouted. ‘Wait for Ugrik to get round the other side of it!’

The Yort was already going. Evidently, he’d been listening to the instructions that Frey hadn’t been paying attention to.

‘Ready?’ Crake said, once they were on opposite sides of the beast. ‘Now!’

They pressed their thumb-studs together. The pack on Frey’s back hummed into life, and the Iron Jackal froze and screeched in agony. It tried to thrash, it howled and raged, but it had been straitjacketed, trapped in an invisible cage of frequencies.

Frey felt a desperate grin come to his lips. It was working! They were hurting the bastard!

How’d you like that, you pan-dimensional piece of shit?

‘Move it over to the circle!’ Crake instructed them. The high-pitched sound from the orb faded as the battery died. ‘Quickly!’

Quickly. Frey remembered Crake’s warning. They had thirty seconds, if that.

Staying on either side of the daemon, they moved towards the circle of rods and spheres. The Iron Jackal resisted; they had to haul against its strength. Frey’s confidence wavered. Were Crake’s devices strong enough to hold it? Conscious of the need for haste, he picked up the pace, hoping to drag the creature with him on its invisible tethers.

The tension on his arm slackened suddenly. The creature lunged at him. He had only time for the briefest flash of utter terror before it was arrested again, a moment before it struck. Its back arched and twisted, and it wailed, trapped once more.

‘Idiots!’ Crake shouted at them. ‘One on each side, or it breaks the cage. Move together! ’

Frey was drenched with sweat. Shocked, he did as he was told, keeping his eye on Ugrik rather than the beast. He should have listened the first time.

How many seconds left? Fifteen? Less? If the beast was released, he had no more weapons to fight it.

They sidestepped, pulling the Iron Jackal between them like two handlers wrangling a maddened bull. The daemon came with them, caught within the confines of its cage of sound. It seemed an impossibly fragile restraint for a creature like that, and yet it was working.