First off, I'd like to thank everyone that's read this so far - really, its all down to you lot for making me continue this - its great to see so many reading something i've written!!! Thanks for those that have reviewed also - i've taken into account what you've said and hopefully improved my writing because of it!! So thanks, one and all... now i've still to write all this damn story...
On with the next part at least...!
Dead City – Part 9
His attackers hunted him with such ferocity it frightened him. They tore through the sky at alarming rates – so much so that Eli Cain believed they could not be human; or alive even, for that matter. Could they be undead pilots, hungering for mid-air combat instead of flesh? Could…
A multitude of black dots blurred his vision, panicking him out of the dream-state the power dive seemed to have driven him to. Focus, Cain. Focus!
He pulled the throttle back, his muscles straining through the negative G, as he tried to right his Thunderbolt. She was a faithful machine, her spirit strong, and Carla changed course, pulling out of the dive.
The warp-spawned aircraft were still on his six, tenacious as ever.
Cain blinked, trying to rid his sight of the persistent dots. They weakened, but were still visible. Ignore them, he thought to himself. You've been here before, you can survive again. He jinked to port, hoping to confuse his foe into hitting one another – or at least coming so close they'd have to break away.
It didn't work. Of course not, he was losing his self-control and making rookie errors.
He had seen them closer now – both were identical in look and shape, and grim to behold. They had red/green hulls etched with a dark, thorny metal, and evil-looking eight-pointed stars adorned their wings. Both were armed with at least four autocannons, able to fire off multiple hard-round explosive shots per second. They could easily eat through his armour if they got a clear shot.
He had seen picts of them at the flight scholam. Hell Talon. The name gave him a mixed feeling of hate and fear. They had been part of the Tharactus War, the archenemy. Chaos. His ironclad confidence wavered thinking about what he was now up against. He was too young to be part of the war, but he new its history inside out. How could they still be operating in this system?
Cain dearly wished he still had some hellstrikes left. But the collapse of civilisation had seen to that.
He felt and heard the next salvo from his enemies, the explosive rounds detonating all around him in dangerous bursts. His canopy darkened, and Carla shuddered violently, but he rode the attack, curving up into a deep white cloud. He knew his assailants didn't need sight to find him, they were so tenacious that he was sure they could smell him. But the manoeuvre bought him valuable seconds.
Cain drained the power to the engines slightly, gaining more control, using his short escape to collect his thoughts. How was he to survive this one? Another thought occurred to him: What about Dassion and the others? Were they safe?
He had to fend off these hellish machines. He had to complete his mission!
The vox crackled, and he jumped in his seat. '… ain, where are you?'
Dassion. It was Dassion. Obviously by now Cain was late to call in. They were looking for him. A horrible thought shot through him – could the Chaos fighters pick up the transmission? Of course.
He broke into open air, his world turning into bright blue glare, catching sight of both Talons above him. A wild, blaring wail blurted through the vox, like a hideous victory cry, and one of his pursuers broke off, diving towards the city kilometres below.
Clearly, Cain realised, they had discovered Hermia, and her cargo. 'No…' he said, his voice faltering and a dull, useless feeling coated his innards. He was going to fail.
He reached out and hit the transit switch on the vox. 'Dassion, Dassion!' he shouted. 'Get out of the sky! Get out of here. Ther-'
Static hissed savagely at him through the vox. So much so that he flicked it off, ending his transmission. The warp blasted beasts were jamming him!
Instinct took over. Not the survival kind. Instead, his nature over ridded the doubt and fear. He was Eli Cain. The last and best Thunderbolt pilot in Tharius. A sky predator. He would not let the chaos filth kill the last remaining humans on the planet.
Also, he had realised, his enemies had just split their forces, and only one Hell Talon remained in pursuit.
He gunned Carla forwards with grim determination.
*
Carson's world vibrated with bone-crunching terror. The noise of whatever assaulted him drowned his senses with nerve-wrenching crashes, and the brutal thumping of it moving towards him echoed through the floor.
This was it. The end. Surely, he had finally ran out of luck? He had unleashed some form of defence for the tech-factory, and it was coming for him.
Such thoughts only got you killed, he decided. They were the thoughts of the plague zombies rotting throughout Tharius, not that of Carson Leto. He gripped his fears mentally, like he did since the apocalypse, like he had taught himself to do in his new life. He forced himself to move away from the devastation rumbling towards him, and scrambled through the dark in what he hoped was a safe direction.
He smacked into plastek chairs and tables, random items falling on him, but he ignored the small, sharp snaps of pain as he drove himself onwards to what he believed was safety in the total darkness. He hit the far wall in moments, jarring his shoulder, and he fell to the ground, gasping for air. He missed his brief walk outside abruptly, the unwanted thought breaking through the adrenalin rush. Only tainted dead air circulated here. Not like his afternoon outside, free from the inhabitants of the shadows.
The thing that burst into the room seemed to halt its charge, and the wheezing, sniffing sound could be heard once more. It was definitely hunting him, Carson decided. If it found him before, it would do so again, he thought. May as well find out what I'm about to fight…
With that, he stood and pointed his unlit light in the direction he thought his attacker stood, and with a deep breath turned it on.
The vision of the monster before him stole his breath and almost tore away the last of his resolve. A misshaped bulk stood around nine foot tall in the middle of the room, near to where Carson sat moments before. A deep red cloak tried its best to cover the thing's body, but many parts of it were shredded and torn, while serpentine appendages snaked outward from underneath its shadow. Each one ended in a different, dangerous looking tool, or metal claw. Most of the monsters face was a wasted, grotesque mass of worm-like tubes, some of which were attached to a mangled respirator. A small percentage of the face was still discernable as human, where dead flesh warped over the remains of bone. It was Tech-magos Bore, the lead tech-priest in the facility. Carson remembered meeting him once – a cold moment, his shocked mind in some way recollected.
Tech-magos Bore was a potent being in life, and a terrible presence in undeath. Somehow he was also infected, his human part now some form of rotten devil, craving flesh and Carson's life. The augmented parts seemed to respond to its inhuman needs, reaching, grasping at any life it found.
As soon as the light played over plague-ridden remains of the tech-magos, the tech-zombie growled through its damaged respirator and continued its charge towards Carson.
Carson turned from the hideous sight and ran diagonally trough the office, away from the beast, toward the hole the tech-zombie had made in the wall, guessing it was his only way out.
Desperately he ran, jumped and scrambled his way out of the room towards the damaged wall, the hand-light casting pulsating shadows everywhere as he did so.
A force gripped him as he tried to leave the office-area, tearing the breath from his lungs as he was pulled backwards. He would have fallen, but something held him up.
Terror shredded through each nerve ending of his being as the light shone on a rusting mechahendrite that had an iron grip on his jumper, from which he dangled helplessly from. Slowly, the sinuous mechanical arm was drawing him toward the gaping, gore-encrusted jaws of the undead being. It rasped and bleated in a mechanical miasma of sound, decreeing Carson's imminent and painful death.
Carson cried out in desperation, his desperate thoughts clouding in panic as he frantically pulled away from the tech-priest with all his might.
This was it. The end.
*
Dassion looked wearily at the central display in his cockpit. Several blips had appeared on his auspex, and Eli was not responding. Was this trouble, or was the young man fooling around again, along with Hermia's old spirit?
He was flying Hermia close to the ground, hiding her as best he could from any auspex reader. He hoped to fly in on the spaceport as close as he could and drop off Mira and the rest before retreating to a safe distance to observe the area. The Thracius spaceport was massive – miles long and miles high, so this mission to find the mysterious visitors was tough as best, but he knew that for they're future safety, they needed to investigate any unusual events. This was one, he reassured himself. He didn't want to put any ones life in jeopardy – especially for his own curiosity – but he felt it was truly deserved this time. He knew people, real people, were abroad in the spaceport, he just had to make sure they where either hostiles, or friendly. Just because his tired mind thought the worst, didn't mean it was true of the new arrivals.
Nothing was ever simple, he thought. The plague victims where probably the simplest beings on the planet now – at least you knew their motivations, their desires: to kill and eat living beings. Easy to understand. But the survivors, the humans… that was a different matter. Especially Cain.
'Eli, is that you?' he said into his vox. 'Cain, where are you?'
The vox merely fizzed. Atmospherics must be at work, he thought.
Still, the auspex was now showing that one aircraft was closing. Finally, Eli was responding.
An ear-splitting cry wrapped itself over the airwaves, drowning the vox-network in dreadful noise. Dassion snapped back in his seat in shock, realising too late what was happening.
Above his shabby, old Lander, the deadly Hell Talon flew frantically downwards towards him, its autocannons firing on automatic.