Perdition (Dred Chronicles 1)

“We need to backtrack a bit,” she said to Martine. “Shaft access isn’t technically part of his territory, but he has some lower levels.”

The other woman nodded. “Let’s find this bastard and kill him. My feet hurt.”

It was such a prosaic complaint that she smiled. “Mine, too. And everything else.”

“You’re not half-bad when you pull that stick out of your ass.” The men laughed. Tam might’ve advised her to admonish Martine for the familiarity, but she let it slide.

“I need it to keep me upright. Come on.”

Her team combed the whole lower level and found only a handful of terrified deserters. Dred played to her squad, letting them choose thumbs-up or thumbs-down on each man’s survival. Damn, she thought, after the last body fell. They’re a bloodthirsty lot. That wasn’t exactly a secret, however.

When she met up with Tam, he shook his head. “Nothing on the upper tiers, either.”

She swore. “Then let’s hope Jael found something. If he didn’t, we might have to scour the entire ship for Grigor.”

And there were so many nooks and crannies, so many places where a desperate man might hide. He could’ve taken it into his head to conscript reinforcements in Shantytown. They were waiting in the ravaged throne room when Jael returned. He was down a man, and by the bloody state of his clothing, he’d found something.

“Report,” she demanded.

“I located him. The men we killed here don’t approach the numbers he’s got guarding him. Grigor’s holed up in the engineering department, lots of gadgets to turn into traps. We nipped at the first wave of defenders, but there were too many. We have to hit him en masse.”

She nodded, then called for the Speaker. “Did you hear?”

“I did, my queen. Death stands ready.”

Silence’s people hadn’t helped with the search, but now that it was time to fight, they clambered quietly to their feet. Their empty eyes were unnerving, but she needed the bodies and blades. With a gesture, she told Jael he should lead the way. The trek carried them past the rooms Grigor’s men squatted in, no dormitories in this part of the ship.

“There’s a long hallway,” Jael said. “At the end, we come to a choke point. There are at least forty men guarding it, and they won’t go down easy. They’re a little drunk, a bit dehydrated, a lot desperate, and completely devoted to the Great Bear.”

If anything, his warning only riled the Queenslanders up further. The men snarled, surging from behind her to charge. She went with a blade, chains wrapped around her arms both for protection and to lend weight to her blows. It was hard to fight under these conditions, between the dark and the press of the crowd. There was no elegance in the mob, only anger and ferocity. She was buffeted from behind, men pushing to break the Great Bear’s line.

With her slim knife, she slashed at a soldier, whose face gleamed with hatred in her mining light. “You’ll never get to him, bitch! Never.”

“I’ll dance on your corpse,” she answered.

Each centimeter took forever to gain because of the sheer volume of bodies surging in the small space. The Queenslanders wore mining helmets and Silence’s people appeared behind the enemy a few seconds before they jammed a blade into the enemy’s back. It was all a blur of shadows and flickering lights, skimming off bloodstained walls as they surged closer to the front, where the Great Bear’s surviving forces tried to hold the line. Men dropped beneath Dred’s boots and sometimes she couldn’t tell who was dying.

She stepped over the corpses, then slammed into the wall as one of Grigor’s men lunged at her. He was an enormous brute with arms the size of her head. There was no room to swing her chains, hardly room to breathe at all, with her own men pressing from behind, Silence’s killers worming toward the front, while the Great Bear’s soldiers pushed back. She’d never been in a mob fight like this one, where she might as easily take a random knife from somebody who was supposed to be on her side. Dred lashed out with a tight kick and broke the brute’s ankle, but the bodies were slammed so close together in the corridor that there was no room for him to fall. She slashed outward then, gasping for air. Her knife carved some room and she shoved forward, stomping over his bloodstained body. Five centimeters closer to the end of the hallway.

Mary. I’ll be trampled if I go down.

Somebody’s helmet went flying, light bouncing down toward their goal. For a few seconds, prisoners scrambled for it, looking for an advantage in the melee. Dred took advantage of the confusion to shove forward farther. Something has to give.

Just when she thought she couldn’t take it a moment longer, Silence broke the standoff. When she appeared at the back of the throng, gray hair swirling, looking like a shade from legend, Grigor’s men took a reflexive step back—and that was all they needed. Dred pushed with all her might, and once she had space, she went to work with her blade. Four men wheeled on her, but she didn’t let them surround her. She dove and rolled past them and came up to her feet; before they could charge, she unleashed her chains.

All the rage she’d suppressed over Einar’s death went into the first lash. The beam from her mining helmet showed her the bloody gash that opened on the enemy’s face, but she had too much rage, too much pain, to stop even though he fell back. Her chains twirled until she could hear only them whipping around her, drowning the cries and heavy thumps of bodies dropping around her. With full strength, she slammed the links downward, then wrenched her wrist forward. The man’s neck snapped.

Artan taught me that move. He thought it was funny to show me such things, like I was a pet capable of learning a clever trick.

Two more rushed in to fill the breach, but in the half-light, they didn’t look so confident anymore. With the choke point breached, they had lost their advantage. She ravaged one with a flurry of strikes to his torso; and when he dropped, she kicked him in the face. The barbs on her boots bit into his skin, so he was screaming in pain when he died of the final cut, a kindness with her knife. She looked up to catch Silence’s eye; the other woman smiled. Then the Handmaiden’s garrote bit deep into her victim’s neck. His struggles slowed, slowed, as his air ran out. With her arms around him, Silence made death look almost like a lover’s embrace, and Dred turned away with a shudder.

More Queenslanders surrounded her, driving the enemy away from her. They laid in with shivs and fists, and didn’t stop until every last defender was on the ground. Some of them were still alive, just grievously wounded. The Speaker strode over to her, a great carrion bird of a man, and goose bumps formed on the nape of her neck when he loomed before her, the skull paint highlighted by the beam from her helmet.