Condemned (Death Planet Book 1) (29 page)

Maggot’s teeth ripped into a steaming, charred steak. “He was probably sucking Sparky’s dick at the time.”

“Then at least Sssparky went happy.”

“So what are we gonna do about it?” Snake said.

“They’re heading down the river. If we cut acrosss to the sssea, we can ssstill beat them there.”

Maggot stared into the darkness beyond the treeline.

“Through the woods? Past the bears and shit?”

“You ssscared of a few bearsss?”

“Since that one ripped Clive’s head off? Fuck yeah.”

“There are more of usss than there are of them.”

“That’s what Clive said. Right before the bear pulled his head off, and ate it.”

“Fucking pussssy. Mosssesss killed Sssparky and ssskinned him. And now he’sss wearing Sssparky as a cloak.”

“To be honest, I never really liked Sparky much.”

“He ssshoved Sssparky’s dick in his assssss.”

“Sparky shoved it in the fat guy’s ass plenty of times.”

“He liked it, though,” Snake said.

“What he did to Sssparky,” Red said, “he may come back and do to you.” Or me. Much more likely to be me. If Moses was killing off the
Meat Packers
, the new leader would be next.

“And the bears will definitely rip my head off,” Maggot said. “I don’t want the last thing I see to be some bear’s tonsils, as my head goes down its throat.”

Red glanced around him. The others were nodding. He should never have let this go so far. If he didn’t do something, he’d have lost the
Meat Packers
.

He slapped Maggot on the shoulder. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m overreacting.”

Then he pulled out his knife. He crouched behind Maggot, grabbed his chin, and pulled it high. He slid the blade across Maggot’s throat. Blood spurted out, and sizzled as it hit the hot rocks around the fire. Maggot’s arms swung wildly, as he tried to grab Red. Then slowed as Red ran the knife across the neck again and again, cutting deeper each time, into the windpipe, and back to the spine. The blood slowed to a dribble as the knife slid between the bones, and bit into the spinal cord.

Red tore the head free. He held it up, Maggot’s eyes now dark and dead. The others stared at him, their faces frozen in stony silence.

“Now,” Red said. “Maybe a bear will eat your head. But none of you you will have a fucking head if you don’t do what you’re fucking told.”

Nods answered him from around the clearing.

“Anyone elssse want to argue?”

Heads shook. Good. Leadership reasserted. Red tossed the head into the fire. The hair caught alight, and the skin began to melt. The scent of burning bacon filled the clearing. But he didn’t have time to eat.

“Then let’sss go.”

Snake nodded toward the fat man hanging from the tree. “What about him?”

“Pack sssome for the road. Feed the houndsss, and bury the ressst, so the fucking bearsss don’t find it.”

K
nives flashed. Hands reached for Daniel. Bloodshot eyes in a smiling face covered by a thick beard stared into his, and the hands reached for his neck. The bearded man leaned forward, and a slashing knife hit his throat. instead of Daniel’s.

A burning torch lay among the wreckage of the wall where Daniel and half a dozen men had landed. He grabbed it, and swung the flaming end around him as he lay on his back. The mob pulled back for a second, but that gave them the time to work out who was who. They swung knives again, and one slashed his arm. The man who swung it screamed as Daniel rammed the torch into his face, setting his beard alight. Another swung at him, and Daniel grabbed his wrist. The blow went wide, and the knife slammed into the dirt instead of his neck.

Daniel twisted aside again. His gaze swung past the grandstand for a second.

There was something in the shadows beneath it. Something familiar.

Something round.

A wooden keg.

He tossed the torch toward it, rolled out of the path of a sword that swung at his chest, and kicked the face of a man who swung a knife at his groin. The swordsman raised his sword again, high above his head.

Then the world shook.

The swordsman's jaw dropped, and the sword tumbled through the air in slow motion, with his severed arms trailing behind. The world went hazy, and ringing filled Daniel’s ears. The man with the knife stared at Daniel with wide eyes, below two rusty nails protruding from his forehead. Until the sword fell back down, and sliced through his neck. The head rolled aside, and blood spurted from his body.

The swordsman glanced at his shoulders, now just a bloody mess where his arms had been a few seconds before. Daniel rolled aside as the man slumped down into the dirt. Then glanced at the rest of the mob.

One man stared bemusedly at his missing leg, then at half a dozen nails impaled in his chest. Another slumped down into the dirt with a long wooden shard in the back of his head, and the bloody point protruding from his face. The cook lay in the fire, drooling, his own knife sticking out of his forehead, and mashed, bloody body parts smeared across his apron. His hair caught light in the flames, and the life faded from his eyes.

Rat-Girl’s head poked up from the hole again. She waved at Daniel, and shouted something, but all he could hear was the ringing in his ears. Whatever she was saying, he had to go.

His legs and arms wobbled as he pushed himself to his feet. Drone parts were scattered across the dirt. Propellers, plastic, electronics. Some of them hadn’t got out of the way fast enough to avoid the blast.

Oh, yes, the blast.

He’d set off the bomb, hadn’t he? Or what was left of the bomb. He turned toward the grandstand.

All he saw was a mess of broken wood, bloody bodies, and things that had once been parts of bodies. One of the Guards tried to push himself up with arms and legs that were no longer there. A drummer’s torso lay on one side of his drum, while his legs dangled down the other, connected only by the string of intestines hanging across it. Streamers of smoke rose from a pile of metal beneath the wood.

Had he done it?

Really killed the King?

The metal pile wasn’t moving. Just smoking.

“The King is dead,” Daniel yelled, and pointed toward the grandstand. He could barely hear his own words over the ringing of the explosion in his ears.

The Guards on the walls lowered their weapons, and stared toward the grandstand. Pig-Face, Andy, and the other Guards in the courtyard lifted their faces from where they’d hit the dirt as the explosion came, and looked that way. Pig-Face muttered something, but Daniel couldn’t make it out over the ringing.

But he’d done it. He’d really fucking done it. The King was dead. The Revolution was on. A smile spread across his face. He could almost dance, if his ribs, nose and teeth didn’t hurt so much. He glanced around the courtyard. No-one moved. The men and women who’d been so eager to kill him a few seconds before just stared at the grandstand.

He looked back that way himself.

A body lay on the ground, beneath a broken plank. Someone short and thin, under a mass of long, white hair, now smeared with blood. The girl’s dress was torn and burned from the explosion, and nails protruded from her face. Her eyes bulged out, and her body jerked as she gasped for breath through a wide-open mouth.

His smile faded. Shit. What had he done? She looked barely half his age. If her age was real, and not some body mod, she was born on Hades. What could she have done to deserve that?

He stumbled toward her. Maybe he could do something to help. But what did he know about medicine?

Then a voice spoke from the remains of the grandstand. Quiet at first, but growing loud enough to echo from the walls.

“The King... is not... fucking... dead.”

A thick cloud of steam rose from the debris. Then broken planks clattered over each other as the pile of metal moved. The hinges creaked, and steam and smoke puffed from the pipes. It stopped and shuddered for a second, and blew a dark cloud of smoke across the courtyard. Then the King’s familiar red eyes stared at Daniel from the eye slits of the helmet.

He’d failed. The King was still alive. But how many people were dead or wounded because of him? For no reason?

“Now,” the King yelled. “Kill that fucking shit.”

A gun boomed from the wall, the noise overpowering the buzzing in Daniel’s ears. The bullet blew his hair aside as it passed millimetres from his head. One of the wounded men on the ground beside him yelled as it smacked into his back.

A high-pitched squeal drowned out the moaning and groaning from the wounded, and the shouts from the Guards. Daniel glanced toward it. Rat-Girl's face stared at him from the dark hole below the wall. She raised a furry hand, and waved toward him, motioning for him to head that way.

What did he have to lose?

B
runhilde rolled over in the courtyard. A man moaned beneath her as her weight pressed down on his chest. She pulled a long, blood-stained lump of wood from her thigh. For most people, it would have made a good vampire-killing stake. For her, it wasn't much more than a splinter. More blood oozed out as she pulled the tip from her skin. She grabbed a nearby corpse, tore the shirt from its chest, and wrapped it around the wound.

Fuck this for a lark. If that little shit could pull bombs out of his ass, he wasn't someone she wanted to mess with. Not today, anyhow. Maybe later, if the King still wanted him dead, and was willing to pay well for the privilege.

Speaking of the King, where was the fucker? A column of smoke towered above the wreckage of the grandstand, and metal scraped on metal as his exoskeleton crunched through the debris, sending broken planks sliding to the ground.

He surveyed the carnage around him. Then pointed at her.

“Get the fucking bear. She's in this with the kid.”

Most of the Guards were crowded together near the wall, as Pig-Face and Andy tried to push Liam into a dark hole at the base. Now they turned toward her, with scowling faces and raised weapons. Oh, shitfucking dog crap. Guess there goes that job? Probably wouldn't have suited her anyway, being bossed around by some guy in a stinky robot suit.

The nearest Guard swung a sword her way. She grabbed his arm, and stopped the blow before the blade slashed across her guts. She twisted her hand, and the Guard slumped to his knees on the ground, dropping the sword on the way. She twisted harder, and the bones snapped.

More Guards crept toward her, weapons drawn. She swung the Guard she held, and tossed him in their direction. He smacked into Nick’s chest. Nick yelled as the impact sent him flying across the courtyard. Then an arrow hissed through the air. If she hadn’t moved, it would have torn into her chest. Fuck, she should have kept that asshole for a shield.

The explosion had scattered debris from the grandstand and food stall all across the courtyard. A smashed wooden table lay on the dirt a metre away. She grabbed one leg, and raised it just in time to deflect the impact of a bullet flying toward her from a Guard’s rifle on the courtyard walls.

The gates were closed. Even she couldn't smash them down before the fucking Guards overpowered her. And she wasn’t going back to that shit-smelling dungeon crammed full of cackling, rat-eating lunatics.

But there was another option.

“Out of the way, cocksuckers,” she yelled, swinging the table around her as she stomped across the courtyard. An arrow hissed through the air from the wall, but she swung the table, and it smacked into the far side.

More chunks of wood moved in the rubble pile that used to be the grandstand. A familiar mop of red and blue hair pushed its way out of the pile, followed by a red face, smeared with soot from the explosion. Princess rolled over, and wood clattered as the broken planks fell away from her body.

Ah, shit.

Brunhilde turned toward the wreckage. Pig-Face and his gaggle of Guards were heading her way. The King kicked debris aside as he tried to clamber out of the collapsed grandstand, but steam hissed from pipes on his back when he lifted his leg high.

“Why is that fucking bear still alive?” he yelled.

Because no more of them want to die for the pittance you pay them, dumb-ass. Like the government back home, most only wanted to do enough to keep their jobs.

Princess sat up. Cloth ripped as she caught her dress on the sharp edges of the planks. She slumped down, looked dazed for a moment, then spat sawdust from her mouth, and wiped some of the soot and dirt from her face.

“Are you rats or men?” Pig-Face yelled. Then he ran toward Brunhilde. That shit would have been a fucking commissar back home. The other Guards glanced at each other, then jogged a safe distance behind him.

No, correct that. The pigfucking commissar would have been leading from behind, not in the front where he was likely to get his head ripped off. She’d seen enough of that during her time in the Peace Force.

She could still just run. Leave Princess to her fate. But how could she live with herself if she did? The dumb girl might not account for much, but she was the closest thing to a friend Brunhilde had found on this shit-stain of a planet.

The King grabbed a metal flagpole, and tried to lift his arm. It rose almost to his shoulder, with the flag flapping in the breeze, then stopped with a hiss of steam, and rattle of grinding gears. He leaned on the pole, and pushed himself up over the debris as he turned toward her.

Brunhilde held the table behind her back as she jumped into the grandstand. The skull of one of the wounded Guards cracked under her foot as she climbed over the debris. Another, with his leg trapped under the wreckage, tried to swing a sword. She kicked him in the face. He fell back and moaned, his nose almost turned inside out by the blow.

The King grunted, and swung his flagpole. Brunhilde dodged the strong but slow swing. He swung it again, and she parried with the table. It shook under his blow, and the impact knocked her back. She stumbled on the debris as the back of her calves smacked into a pile of broken planks. She slammed the table down to support herself.

That asshole was strong.