The Promise of the Child Read Free

sleet at the war machines circling the gaping breach in the fortress, lumps of wet rock the size of horses still falling among his team and denting the reinforced hulls of the landing craft. He checked his spring rifle again, looking around to the assembling mercenaries still funnelling from the hatches, and moved wordlessly through the debris to a ruined corridor, his armour-plated feet crunching over the dismembered bodies of the Vulgar who had lived at this level. Teeth and fleshy shards of bone littered the rubble like seeds, some sticking to the polished metal of his boots.
    His squad took point, crowding past him to the edges of the doorway to hurl tiny Oxel scouts. The fairylike Prism species whistled to each other and scampered in, their bulky flight-suits clinking with dangling bomblets. As he waited, Tzolz looked back through the dripping chasm at the vacuum-suited Lacaille knight still sitting in the open hatch of the furthest craft, the heavy helmet making any expression unreadable. Rusted pipes and chunks of material still dropped like snow into the breach and Tzolz backed further into the doorway.
    A series of detonations signalled the depths of the Oxel’s explorations and he turned quickly, shaking the moisture from the weapon and hoisting it to his shoulder. Ahead, the dark and smoky corridor had been widened, doorways to adjoining chambers blown in by the tiny scouts, and he diverted two teams in either direction with swift hand movements, taking the central passage himself with three more. Their spies had indicated that the Shell was frequently moved for its security, resting at irregular intervals in an iridium-lined chamber in the guts of the structure. If the agents valued their skins they’d have made their way out of the country to the harbour at Untmouth by now, knowing full well what awaited those who remained in the fortress and the fallow lands surrounding it. Tzolz flicked his lights on, illuminating the rest of the corridor with a caustic white glare that sent shadows bouncing across bare stone walls and elaborate hanging braziers. At the end of the section of corridor there began a succession of spiral ramps once necessary for vehicular access, one of which would take them down into the lower levels. After three ramps they would hit a shaft, the spine of the fortress, where a drilling team was to meet them.
    He waited, holding up a gnarled finger. Crude microphones on his breastplate tasted the silence, hearing the distant explorations of his five other teams as they swarmed through the fortress, the grumble of detonations and the groaning of the structure all around them adding to the distant moan of the wind through the chasm at their backs. No conversation between his units was permitted, and so at last he heard them, whispering in their little high-pitched voices. Tzolz allowed himself ten more seconds, finger still raised, understanding Vulgar more than adequately. He pointed slowly at the leftmost opening of the many-branched corridor ahead of them and his three mercenaries converged on it, their thin shadows looming like skeletons across the wall. At the edge of the doorway he turned off his lights and listened to the darkness, the voices—inaudible to a normal Prism ear—louder in his helmet now. He knew exactly where they were.
    He unclipped a bomblet from a canister on the belt of his suit, pulling the firing pin and counting, then stooped and rolled it swiftly down the spiral ramp. A few seconds later, one of the voices hesitated, obviously turning as its volume fluctuated, and Tzolz muffled his auditory channel. The blast shook the spiral passageway, shrapnel spinning and clattering from the entrance. Tzolz flicked on his lights and dashed through the curling smoke, leaping the last of the passage and landing among the disoriented Vulgar platoon, the small figures illuminated harshly in his strobing gaze. He rammed his rifle’s bayonet into the closest Vulgar,