The Iron jackal

Forty-Four

‘We gotta get out of here!’ Pinn cried. Silo would have been the first to agree, if only he could see some way to do it.

Halfway across the bridge, Bess was struggling beneath two of the spider hybrids, who were drilling and hacking ineffectually in search of a weak spot. She wasn’t in much danger from their attacks but, while she was occupied, others slipped by. The Century Knights had taken position behind her, at the edge of the platform where the Ketty Jay ’s crew hid behind banks of mysterious mechanisms. Bree and Grudge mopped up the ones that got through, working in partnership, choosing their targets carefully and covering each other while they reloaded.

They were holding the enemy off for now. But it would only last as long as their bullets did.

Silo felt the pressure to act. Malvery, Pinn and Ashua were looking to him for a decision. He’d told the Cap’n he’d get them out safely. But how? They were trapped here, and breaking out would get them nowhere but dead. They’d be mobbed in the open.

He scanned his surroundings. There was little to offer hope. The semicircular platform was only about five metres deep, barely enough to cram them all in if Bess joined them. Panels ran around its curved edge, where those who weren’t fighting the hybrids had taken shelter. At the back was a wall of controls, set into the base of the enormous engine of flesh and metal that thrashed the air above them, pumping and bellowing. Lights blinked and gauges trembled. He recognised bits of technology – a lever, a dial, simple things like that – but for the most part he had no idea what they did or how to operate them.

Come on, Silo. The Cap’n trusted you. Think. You ain’t losin’ another bunch o’ people. Not these people.

‘Over the side!’ he heard Samandra call to her partner. He saw what she meant immediately. Some of the hybrids had given up attempting to get past Bess. They were climbing down the walls into the trench.

Suddenly Silo realised what the holes he’d observed earlier were used for. They were made to fit the hybrid’s spider legs, to allow them access to the entire height and breadth of the wall and the machinery there.

If they could climb into the trench, they could climb out of it again on the far side. They could climb up onto the platform, behind Bess and the Century Knights.

Any thought of defending their position disappeared. If there was ever a time to act, it was now. And yet all ways le?ed to death and failure.

Grudge, responding to Samandra’s warning, swung his autocannon over the side of the bridge and let fly. He obliterated two of the creatures as they crawled towards the floor of the trench. His third shot missed as its target jinked aside. It smashed into a panel of machinery instead.

The reaction among the hybrids was uncanny. Just for an instant, they all froze at once. Then they resumed their attack as if nothing had happened.

But not all of them.

The hybrid that Grudge had missed stopped its climb down the walls. Its forelegs split into an array of tools, and it began attending to the damaged panel. A moment later it was joined by two more, their nimble limbs busy as they cooperated.

And then Silo saw a chink of light in the darkness. The tiniest glimmer of hope.

‘Grudge!’ he called. ‘Give me the dynamite!’ He ran out on to the bridge. Grudge pulled the satchel from beneath his depleted ammo belts and tossed it to him without looking.

‘We gonna push forward!’ he yelled at the Knights over the rattle and boom of their guns. ‘When I give the word, not before! Everything you got! Get us back across this bridge!’

Samandra glanced over her shoulder at him, a look that was part puzzlement, part suspicion. Deciding whether to trust him or not. Deciding whether to accept his command.

‘Meanwhile,’ he said to Grudge. ‘Don’t shoot the spiders. Shoot the machinery!’

He didn’t wait to see if the big man took up his suggestion. He was already running back to the platform. He crouched down by the back wall, at the base of the great engine. The others came over as he was digging the dynamite out of the satchel.

‘Er, mate,’ said Malvery. ‘You do know that setting off that dynamite is liable to kill us all, don’t you? There ain’t much space on this platform.’

‘We ain’t gonna be here,’ said Silo. He jerked a thumb towards the bridge. ‘We goin’ out that way. Gonna blow this damned thing on our way out.’

‘Not with those fuses,’ Ashua said, pointing at the stick in his hand.

Silo looked, and saw. He felt a fool for not having spotted it before she did. The dynamite was short-fused for throwing. Grudge didn’t carry it around for demolition; he used them to blast enemies out of hiding.

He cursed inwardly. They’d get five seconds out of a fuse like that. Five seconds wasn’t nearly enough time tonough ti get away from the concussion created by eight sticks of dynamite. Not with all those creatures in the way.

He wracked his brains, but nothing came to mind. There was no time for a new plan, not with the hybrids crawling into the trench, coming closer by the second. Just for a moment, he thought he’d seen a way out. But it had been a false hope after all.

All that was left was a charge. If they could get across the bridge, maybe they could use the dynamite to take out some of the enemy by throwing it among them. But he knew in his heart there were too many.

He was drawing breath to give the order when Pinn blurted: ‘Flame-Slime!’

Malvery and Ashua exchanged a look. ‘I could’ve sworn he just said “Flame-Slime”,’ said the doctor.

‘Professor Pinn’s Incredible Flame-Slime!’ Pinn said, his chubby face alight with enthusiasm. He brandished a small tin from his pocket. ‘You put some on the fuse, and…’ He looked amazed that he’d even come up with the idea. ‘It’ll work!’ he insisted. ‘It’ll actually work!’

Malvery was equally amazed. ‘It actually will,’ he said.

Silo took the tin and unscrewed the top. Inside was a transparent jelly. Yes, he saw how it could be done. If they stood it upright and only coated the tip, the fuse wouldn’t light until the insulating jelly had burned through.

‘How long?’ he demanded of Pinn.

‘Thirty to forty seconds,’ said Pinn. ‘I timed it,’ he added proudly. ‘Scientifically.’

‘Silo!’ yelled Samandra from the bridge. ‘They’re gettin’ through! Whatever you’re gonna do, do it fast!’

Thirty to forty seconds, and five for the fuse. It’d be enough.

‘Get ready,’ he said. ‘We’re fightin’ our way out.’

They nodded, and he saw the determination on their faces. They had a chance, and they were going to take it. In that moment, he felt what the Cap’n must feel at times like this. Pride. They were a ragtag lot, no question, but no one could say they didn’t have heart.

‘Bess!’ he shouted over the din of gunfire and the sound of the great engine. ‘Clear us a path!’

The golem heard him, and this time she listened. It took Crake to restrain her, but anyone could spur her to violence. She roared and began bulling her way forward, scooping up the hybrids like a snowplough. The Century Knights moved uights mop behind her, shooting any that spilled past her outstretched arms.

‘Go!’ he barked at the others. ‘Help ’em out. Do what you can.’

They did as he told them. He took a slap of flame-slime and coated the end of a fuse in it. Then he put the stick of dynamite upright among the others, and rested the satchel against the wall. It wasn’t the ideal setting for an explosive charge, but he had nowhere better and nothing to tamp it with. He just had to hope the mechanisms that operated the power station were as delicate as they were complex.

Ashua shouted from the bridge. ‘They’re climbing up the wall! Get out of there!’

He pulled a box of matches from his pocket. No time to finesse this, then. If the flame-slime didn’t work as expected, they’d still be too close to the explosion when it went up. But if he left it any longer, the hybrids would be on him.

He struck the match and touched it to the fuse. Fire bloomed at the tip, but it didn’t fizz as a fuse should. The flame-slime was burning, but the heat hadn’t reached the black-powder core of the fuse.

‘Silo!’ Ashua screamed. He looked over his shoulder and saw the forelegs of a hybrid reaching over the top of the panels at the edge of the platform. Ashua began blasting at it from the bridge, but her pistol didn’t slow it in the least.

Silo jumped to his feet, snatching up his shotgun from where it lay next to the bag of dynamite. As the hybrid’s head came over the top of the panels, he unloaded point blank into its face. Glass sprayed him as its eye-clusters exploded, and it flew backwards and off into the trench.

Now he could see into the trench, he saw that Grudge had followed his advice. The wall of the trench was cratered with autocannon blasts. Around each crater were two or three of the hybrids, frantically repairing as best they could. Between them and the creatures already in the trench, the numbers at the end of the bridge had thinned.

Bess was shunting a tangled pile of hybrids along the bridge, driving them forward with her inexorable strength. She was almost at the far side now. The others were firing every which way, shooting at anything that moved.

All this he saw in an instant. And in that instant, a hybrid leaped up off the wall of the trench and landed on the bridge, cutting him off from the others.

Time decelerated. He chambered a new round as if in slow motion, glancing at the dynamite as he did so. The flame-slime hadn’t burned through yet. How many seconds had passed? How many more to go?

The hybrid on the bridge shook out its forelegs. They split into a dozen smaller arms with tips that burned and sawed and cut. Bess might have been impervious to them, but he wasn’t. His crew saw the danger, but they were too far up the bridge, almosbridge, t at the other side now, following in Bess’s chaotic wake.

He fired. The blast did little more than stun it. He stepped forward, cranked the lever of the shotgun, and fired again. One of its back limbs came off and went spinning away. Step, crank, fire. It staggered back against the edge of the bridge, limbs flailing spasmodically.

Step. Crank. Fire.

His last shot blew it off the side of the bridge, sending it tumbling to the floor of the trench. Already more were clambering onto the platform. Some moved towards him, but one of them went straight for the dynamite. He backed away onto the bridge. His way was clear now, but he was afraid of what that hybrid might do. If the dynamite didn’t go off, they were all dead.

The hybrid tilted its head this way and that, its multiple eye-lenses whirring, studying the satchel. As if dynamite were something it had never seen before, and it didn’t know what to make of it.

The dynamite fizzed and the fuse sparked into life. The hybrid jerked back in surprise. Silo turned tail and ran.

Behind him, the hybrid picked up the lit stick of dynamite, raised it to its face, and tipped its head quizzically.

The explosion lifted him up and threw him forward, pushing the breath from his lungs. He flew through the air and crashed down onto the bridge, skidding and sliding with uncontrollable momentum, until he fetched up in a heap at the feet of his crewmen.

His head was filled with wool. His senses were deadened, his sinuses throbbed, and there was a high, piercing whistle that seemed to emanate from inside his skull. He felt strong arms on him, and Malvery pulled him blinking to his feet. The doctor was saying something – he could tell by the movement of his great white moustache – but he couldn’t understand what. He wobbled, childlike in his confusion.

Then he was being pulled along. He stumbled to keep up. Guns were firing all around him, and huge arachnid shapes rushed past in a stampede. He watched, uncomprehending, as the horde of creatures flooded on to the bridge he’d just vacated. The things seemed to have no interest in attacking him or his companions. Instead they were rushing towards the shattered platform at the other end. There was an ascending whistle coming from that direction, as of pressure building and building.

Another explosion, bigger than the first, blasting pieces of flesh and chitin everywhere. The force of it shoved him back against Malvery. The doctor tripped, and they both went to the floor. Mangled and charred metal panels flipped through the air above them.

He was helped up a second time by other hands. By now his senses had reasserted themselves, and he could see the damage they’d wreaked. The platform was entirely gone, and half the bridge with it. All that was left was a large blackened gash at the base of the engine. Electricity sparked and sizzled within, and there was a distressing metallic whine coming whine c from somewhere in the guts of the machine. Those hybrids that hadn’t been destroyed in the explosions swarmed over to it, blindly obsessed with its repair. As Silo had hoped, the invaders had been entirely forgotten.

‘Yeah!’ cried Pinn, fist pumping the air. ‘Let’s hear it for Professor Pinn’s Incredible Flame-Slime! Artis Pinn, inventor!’

The sarcastic comment Malvery was preparing was cut off by a third explosion. This one came from off to the side, where the enormous flank of one of the hourglass structures sloped into the chamber. The blast shattered a section of the containing vessel. Coloured gas began to seep through the cracks, and electricity crawled across its surface.

‘Er,’ said Pinn.

Suddenly, a fork of lightning lashed out across the chamber, blasting the shattered section apart as it went. Where it hit, an explosion threw a bloom of flame into the air.

Silo and Malvery stood next to one another, momentarily still, mesmerised by the sight of what they’d done. Samandra stuck her head in between the two of them and laid her hands on their shoulders.

‘Boys,’ she said. ‘I’m thinkin’ we might want to be elsewhere. What say?’

‘The lady’s got a point,’ Malvery said.

Samandra patted them both on the shoulders, then turned and ran like her heels were on fire.