Guns of the Temple (The Polaris Chronicles Book 1) (20 page)

The day had gone from low to rock-bottom. Taki reasoned that with his particular luck, someone was bound to throw him a shovel. The victory celebration had placed him in a parade column consisting of yet more armored reliquaries, among them a real horseless carriage with tires that served as the duke’s personal conveyance. The interior was adorned with faux-fur upholstery and even a working icebox stocked with bottles of Ursalan wine. Periodically, Gul Hekmatyar would stand up inside the carriage through a porthole on its roof and toss fistfuls of milligrad to the crowds lining the streets. In his wake, the desperate crushed each other for the chance to grab a spare round. A white tiger cub was resentfully draped on his shoulder, kept from tearing out the duke’s throat by a leather muzzle and mitts over its paws. Music was provided by accordion-wielding soldiers and amateur singing.

“If I hear another verse of ‘Gul is next to God’ again, I might actually vomit,” Draco said, shaking his head. The squad had initially ridden around on top of the same metal beast that they had ridden into New Petrovic, but gradually had managed to slip inside. The most immediate threat to the duke’s health came from the angry carnivore held on his shoulder, not rebels.

“I feel bad for the tiger,” Taki said, mashing his hands over his ears.

“Buncha slack-jawed catamites,” Hadassah spat. “That’s why I use this!” She pointed to a small, ancient contraption tucked into the hem of her skirt, from which a pair of yellowed cords ran and seemed to dive into her ears.

“What are those?” Taki asked.

“Take a listen. It’ll turn you into a godrotting sexual tyrannosaurus,” she said, and pulled one of the cords away from her ear. At the end of it was a small, bud-like protrusion that she clumsily jammed in Taki’s ear. The deafening rush of noise and singing dropped his jaw and he instinctively ripped the device out of his canal.

“What is this witchcraft? Where the hell did you find this, anyway?”

She smiled at him, this time without being sardonic.

“It’s not unholy. When I was in Ursala, we stopped at this deserted old village with some ruins nearby. I was digging around and found this buried under a silly-looking plastic emblem. I tell you, they had no creativity in those days. Looked like a white fruit someone had bitten already.”

“What kind of fruit?”

“How the hell would I know? Maybe a napple or something?”

“Oy, aren’t you supposed to be vigilant on duty? Suffer with the rest of us!” Draco said, tugging at her still-budded ear.

“Ow! I
am
being vigilant! Good music cancels out crap music, right?’

“No, it does
not.
Anyway, you should—”

His words were torn from his mouth as a blast front hit the head of the motor column. The concussive pressure was enough to flip the thirty-three ton mass of the rolling temple over onto its roof, cave in its front end, and liquefy the insides of its driver inside his armor.

Lotte flew to the rear of the hull and hit it with enough force to dent in her cuirass. Had she been unprotected, the blow would have been fatal. Reflexively, she extended her palms to dull the oncoming crush of bodies. Hadassah was the first to hit, and smacked Lotte with enough force to bruise limbs. The napple-crested device flew away and shattered into thousands of glassy slivers. Draco was next. His muscle mass was slightly harder to handle, but he was a convenient cushion for Taki and most of all Karma, who tumbled ingloriously in midair like the world’s most terrible acrobat.

Draco was the first to recover. He inhaled ferociously and roughly pushed bodies away from him. Karma groaned as he rolled on the ceiling-turned-floor, gasping in pain and gripping his chest. Taki was on his knees, spitting bile. In the distance, two more large explosions sounded but did not seem to be as forceful as the first ones.

“D-Draco!” Hadassah shouted as she pulled herself up to her knees by the bulkhead. “Lotte! She’s…”

“Captain!” Draco bellowed as he stepped over Karma and knelt next to Lotte. He cradled her head in his arms and tears flashed in his eyes. “No! This can’t be happening! Goddammit!”

Her eyes opened and she fixed an incredulous glance at her corporal.

“Emreis, quit screaming. I’m
fine
,” she said, sitting up stiffly with a cough. “Start patching each other up. We don’t have much time.”

“Y-yes ma’am!” he cried in relief.

“Fucking plastic,” Hadassah snarled as she regarded her broken toy. “Okay, I can move around. Draco, go take care of Newboy next. I’ll get the Shmuck!” she said before crawling through the cabin. It was bathed in subdued red lighting and Karma was barely visible. Deftly, she slid her palm under the cuirass on his chest to infuse her energy against his bare skin. Prana transfer could not repair broken limbs or knit together severed vessels. Those fixes required surgeons. What her technique did was promote clotting and dull pain enough for severely wounded soldiers to take to the battlefield.

“I thought you didn’t want to take it too fast,” Karma whispered coyly.

She blushed and scowled at the same time. “Do you want to die?”

“Point taken.”

“Is everyone intact?” Lotte asked. More importantly, the squad’s weapons had also survived. “Regardless of our sentiments, we must protect the duke from harm. Find him and remove him from this place, no matter what. And do not separate from the group.”

With that, she kicked the dented rear door open and leapt outside with her flamberge drawn. The cityscape around Tirefire was a smoking, flaming vision of Armageddon. Heat from the burning corpses of diesel-rich relics was enough to scorch skin from ten meters away. Charred bodies of guardsmen and civilians lay sprawled on the rubble-strewn street. Smoking, liquefied fat spread out from the bodies like scorched butter and leaked between the cobbles. Popping of ammunition cooking off in the fires prompted reflexive ducking and furtive glances for cover. The rear of the column was also aflame, and whoever had survived the explosions was in no condition to fight. Gunfire rang out from the roofs as well as down a nearby alley that was unblocked. Streaks of rubber and shards of glass on the road told the tale of a rapid, but ultimately fruitless escape.

“There,” Lotte shouted as she looked down the alley at a cluster of Arben men carrying kalashes and spears. “There’s where the d
—
” She stopped, mid-sentence.

No one heard her but Taki. As he glanced at the rebels and then back at Lotte, he realized why she’d stopped. It would be easy to pretend to have lost the duke in the chaos. To let the rebels take care of the problem. Lotte mouthed something to him.

“Your call, Natalis,” he could have sworn she had said.

He clenched his jaw. He wanted to remain silent, and desperately so. Gul Hekmatyar had violated his oath to his people.
But then,
Taki thought,
what happens to us?
What mattered was now survival. Not just his, but everyone’s. If the duke died, it meant they would all go back to the brig, and he had the sneaking suspicion that their punishment wouldn’t be limited to a simple lashing. Again, he thought of Lotte, and what she had endured to get them here. He had disgraced her enough. Now, he would prove himself worthy of being her corporal.

He spat in disgust and tapped Lotte on her arm. “Do it,” he said with a shake of his head and his mouth full of the taste of ash.

Lotte nodded gravely and pointed her sword. “The duke is there! Go save his worthless ass! Charge!”

Duke Gul Hekmatyar sat on the ground with his finery marred with soot and blood and rent by broken glass. He stared, cow-like, as the rebels wrapped a loop of twisted cloth around his neck and dragged him along the cobblestones. The gaudy revolver was no longer in its holster. The rebels’ faces were ecstatic with fury.

“
Te qifsha, Kurve!
” spat one as he gave the noose a final yank and then started to turn a windlass at the other end. The duke grasped at the constricting tourniquet but could find no purchase for his fingertips. Piss leaked form his britches and pooled on the cobbles.

At the edge of the crowd, screams and cries of surprise erupted as bodies started to go flying. Gunfire crackled amidst the whooshing noise of blades cutting the air. The executioners abandoned the windlass and unslung their kalashes to meet the new enemy, but it was too late.

Karma whirled and plunged his swords into another man’s chest before disemboweling his target with a downward swipe. Draco’s fighting iron took off the top of a rebel’s skull and wrapped around another’s neck, breaking it. Lotte’s flamberge plunged into another rebel and she hoisted her blade in the air, allowing his body to slip down its scalloped edges to shred his insides completely. Taki knelt beside the duke and threw one of the man’s hairy arms across his shoulders to support him. Karma joined in quickly.

“Where the fuck were you bitches? What the fuck do I pay you for? Niketas will skin you alive!” the duke shouted in Karma’s ear. Taki recoiled, stung at the man’s response to being saved from certain death.

“More of them coming!” Hadassah shouted, uncharacteristically spending milligrad as she furiously worked the bolt of her Nagant. “And shit!
Out of nowhere is fucking spetsnaz!
”

With her words, Taki felt a wave of anxiety course through him again. He gulped air and had to brace himself against a nearby stone wall for support. His eyelids flickered shut. Aslatiel stood over him, ready to give the killing blow.

“No!” he bellowed, and swallowed the image back. He brought the sleeve of his padded jack to his mouth and bit down hard as if to chew his fear up and swallow it. He wouldn’t be able to save his squad if he drowned in flashbacks and terror. It was time to fight.

“Get back! Get back!” Lotte shouted as she faltered under a hail of bullets she barely intercepted with her shield. The barrage rasped through wood and metal and turned the Dominion sun into a smoking crater. Taki immediately replied with a
Khala
burst at the direction of the attack, only to see a blonde woman leap out of the way and let off another burst of fire at him. Taki ducked behind crumbling stairs and let off a salvo with his Bastard to allow Lotte to pick herself up and retreat. Imperials flitted in and out of sight in pairs, with one taking shots and another trying to close the gap and melee up close. Draco’s fighting iron whipped singing death through the air and clanged off blades and shields, while Hadassah covered him with her rifle and prevented any enterprising enemies from getting a clear shot at him. Karma tried to force a wrought-iron gate open, frantically bashing its padlock with the pommels of his swords.

This is just like before,
Taki realized.
They’re trying to pen us in, but this time there’s no escape to the rear. And no Hundred Arms, either!
Space behind was shrinking. He noticed that Hadassah had run out of ammunition. The Bastard had jammed on a stuck casing and torn off the cartridge’s rim. It would not fire again without a trip to the shrine. Taki diverted his prana again to cast sutra. It would kill his mobility, but there was nowhere left to run, anyway. He let out a growl and prepared to go out casting.

“
Spettsgruppe,
hold your fire!” a man’s voice boomed down through the alley. Taki paused. Was this some sort of trick? To get his squad to cease their efforts and thus become an easier kill? To his surprise, no more rounds zipped his way. Taki held his palms out, nervously waiting to channel.

The Imperials began to show themselves one by one. There was no way for Taki to forget Aslatiel, who strode forward with the restrained confidence of a man who knew he was the imminent victor. A lump formed in Taki’s throat, but he held firm. It was the same group who had trounced them at Vergina, but with one more addition: a blonde woman he had never seen before. It was clear that the Alfa had ammunition and prana to spare. Any way he figured it, Taki knew he was dead.

“What is the meaning of this?” Lotte snarled, pointing her flamberge at Aslatiel. “Why do you not finish us off?”

“I want to talk for a minute.”

“We have little to talk about, Imperial. Slay us or get thee hence!”

“That is regrettable, Archangel Yuriel.”

Taki’s jaw dropped.
What did he just call her?

Lotte spat and glared daggers at Aslatiel. “I am not of the triada anymore. I am simply Captain Satou.”

“So be it,” Aslatiel said. “Did you slaughter innocents and children at New Petrovic?”

“Trying to satisfy your conscience before you kill us? Yes, I
did.
”

Taki opened his mouth to protest. It wasn’t right. She didn’t need to take on the guilt by herself.

“You’re a poor liar,” Aslatiel said with a sad smile. “I would have liked to have faced you in your prime. Now, while it’s not too late, tell your soldiers to surrender. I will make sure they are treated with dignity and repatriated to their homes once the war ends. Otherwise, they will not survive this.
You
will not survive this. Have pity on your mothers.”