‘I had some bolts installed a while ago, when we were waiting on that steel shipment. When the pressure reaches . . .’
Now that the artillery had stopped, there was enough quiet for them to hear the explosive popping sounds, the inner bolts perforating the skin of the fuel tanks, piercing each in a dozen places, the holes so tiny that the viscous oil vented out in a great cloud of black mist. In Totho’s mind’s eye he saw it: a choking fog that issued from every quarter and covered the entire compound.
Drephos threw him a glance, and his response was automatic: ‘Do it.’
Out there, the attackers would be choking and coughing from the stuff, eyes and lungs alike on fire with it. But not really on fire. Not until the last of their lightning banks discharged. Not until the whole world outside the workshops was set alight.
Not until now.
Drephos rammed the switch up, summoning that last dreg of crackling power from their glass cells, and Totho watched the edges of the shutters flare orange, then white, until the very metal itself was glowing. The Glove artificers were backing away from the heat of it.
Our enemies have forgotten who they came to kill.
The roaring of the flames died swiftly, leaving distant screams – and pitifully few of those. The mass of troops who had been crowding into the Iron Glove compound had surely been devastated, eliminated as any potential threat to Drephos.
Have we won, then? And what now?
‘Open the shutters,’ Drephos croaked. Totho opened his mouth to countermand the order, then realized what wretched hypocrisy was moving him. That it had been done, he was glad, but he did not want to see it. He would force himself; he would face what he was.
Half of them would not open, in the end, their metal warped and softened by that sudden flare of heat. What the rest of them revealed was a blasted wasteland, the familiar outlines of the stores and forges and foundries coated black, and everywhere the flash-charred bodies of the dead and dying. The sound was the worst part: that weak chorus of agony and mortality from those still alive, set amidst the many voices of the inanimate – the burning wood, the metal that creaked and cracked as it cooled, the secondary retorts as flammables burst their casks and drums.
‘It would have been the perfect time,’ Totho heard himself saying, ‘to use the Bee-killer, after all.’
Drephos studied him. ‘You’re right, although I had not thought to hear you say it. I . . . One of the reasons I had kept that weapon from the Empire was that I thought . . .’
‘You thought that I . . .?’
The Colonel-Auxillian’s face was blank, as the mind behind it – whatever its perfect grasp of artifice – wrestled with its less than perfect understanding of people. ‘That you would not approve.’
It was a strange moment, to find that there was something in the man beyond that pursuit of efficiency, and that he valued his junior partner enough to tiptoe around his imagined sensibilities. Totho sagged against one wall, feeling as though he should weep, if only the fires without had not scorched away his ability to do so.
One of the other artificers suddenly lifted his head. ‘I hear fighting still.’
Even as he announced it, Totho picked out the sounds himself, wondering how some pocket of the enemy could possibly have survived the firestorm outside.
No, not outside. Fighting within the workshops.
He was bringing his snapbow up, hearing the harsh hammer of a nailbow’s firepowder charges detonating. The first two Wasps pushing through the doorway took the balance of his magazine, but then it was empty and he was fumbling for a new one as five or six more spilt into the room. Their nailbows were crude and inaccurate compared to the Glove’s weaponry, but they were good enough at close quarters, and most of the artificers there were not even armed.
A trail of bolts tore across Totho’s chest, knocking him from his feet and almost propelling him out through one of the unshuttered windows. The impact dented his mail but failed to pierce it, the new magazine spinning from his hands across the floor.
He was scrabbling at his belt for a grenade, actually had his hand on it ready to prime it and tear it free, when Gannic came through the door with a snapbow directed straight at Drephos’s head. The sly merchant who had visited them before was now almost unrecognizable. The man wore the mail of the Airborne, his scalp stiff with dried blood: a desperate man wild with the need to fulfil his orders.
‘And now you stand down,’ he spat, taking one careful step after another. Others of his men had their nailbows aimed at Totho where he sat or at the surviving artificers. They all looked ragged and battered: the Iron Glove staff had plainly given them a hard time, even when taken by surprise.
‘You forced entry before we closed the shutters,’ Drephos observed. ‘Or . . . no, before the fighting started.’
Gannic nodded. ‘And chose our moment to make our move, too. We had to wait for your apprentice to come back from playing soldier. My orders are to take the pair of you back to the Engineers.’
‘For execution?’
‘For conscription,’ Gannic returned. ‘Your head’s made of gold dust, Colonel. And don’t think I was joking about anything I said before. You could make the next best thing to general if you play along. The whole cost of our taking Chasme could be written off.’
‘“Taking” Chasme?’ Drephos enquired carefully, his eyes on the slight weaving of the snapbow barrel as he slid a half-step closer to the other man.
‘I’m amazed you held out as long as you did. Goes to show that governors make bad battlefield commanders nine times out of ten, and this is no exception . . .’ Gannic’s words trailed off into a querulous sound as his eyes registered the opened windows and what lay beyond: the charred wreck of the Iron Glove compound, the fires still blazing across much of Chasme, the wrecked boats at the wharves. Less the city of Chasme now than its broken corpse. ‘What did you do?’ the Imperial whispered, eyes wide.
‘We defended ourselves with whatever tools were available,’ Drephos declared. He had moved a little closer now, and Totho saw some of the Wasps notice, but Gannic himself was still staring at the utter desolation outside.
‘What did you do?’ he repeated. ‘The attack . . .’
‘Has been repelled,’ Drephos said calmly. ‘Totho thought we should have used the Bee-killer instead. On reflection, I believe it would have been more elegant.’
At last Gannic’s eyes returned to him. ‘You had it all along, then.’
‘Oh, yes.’ For a moment Drephos was looking at Totho, an understanding passing between them. ‘I imagine you’ll want to take it to show your masters.’
‘At the very least,’ Gannic told him hoarsely. ‘We’re going to need to show them as much as possible, to explain this mess.’
‘Our cellar here has a strongbox that you will find easily enough. The formula is within, along with various other plans. At least they will see some use, I suppose.’
‘That’s more like it—’ Gannic began, and Drephos closed the final distance between them and got his metal hand about the snapbow barrel.
Had Gannic simply pulled the trigger, it would have ended there, but he tried to tug the weapon free, and Drephos’s mechanical grip crushed the steel tube into a clenched mess.
Totho twisted the release catch of a grenade, feeling the priming cord whip free as he tore it from his belt. He counted two seconds – during which the first nailbowman was already shooting – and cast the little faceted shape past the Wasps towards the far wall.