A Brotherhood of Crows.

After that, I carried on alone.

Red emergency lights lit my path, strewn with debris and bodies. I could hear crashing and crunching sounds, far off in Cerberus’s depths, as the ship began to cave in on itself. I walked steadily forward, my revolver up, through metal corridors of dead men.

Eventually, I reached a bulkhead door that had been torn clean off its hinges. Before it lay the mountainous corpse of a supersoldier, peppered with bullet holes. Judging by the number of equally dead marines strewn around it, it had put up a hell of a fight. Its mouth hung up, and its dead eyes regarded me languidly, as I stepped past it, and onto the bridge.

It was mess. Computer terminals had been shredded by claws and bullets. The two crew pits were like open graves, reeking of blood and death. Two marines, blue in the face, lay collapsed on the floor. The bodies hadn’t been savaged. It looked like they had choked to death. A small mercy, perhaps.

Outside the bridge, I could see through the canopy - cracked and spiderwebbed from gunfire - the sky. Jagged bolts of green lightning split the clouds like varicose veins. Right before me, so close I felt like I could reach out and touch it, was an enormous black...nothing. Kilometres wide, I had never seen such darkness. Cerberus had pitched forward and seemed to be sinking, almost leisurely into the heart of the Maelstrom. As I watched, the wreckage of other airships - though whether they were Commonwealth or Severance I could not say - were wrapped in lightning, which, tendril like, drew them into that great black eye, until nothing more could be seen.

I surveyed the scene, and saw what I had come for. Taking my revolver in a two handed grip, I said: “Well, look what we have here…”

Gorcrow was sprawled against the captain’s command console at the very centre of the bridge. His one immaculate suit was in tatters, and his mask dulled, and dented. One hand clasped tightly against his belly, where again the silk of his shirt, a deep, vermillion flower of blood spread.

“Sleep...walker…” the voice that came from that mask was weak, a shell of itself. I paced, slowly, forward, keeping my gun levelled on him. “You’re...here to kill me.”

“By the looks of it,” I responded, “You’re already dead. Gut shot, right? Nasty. Was that our friend Pillion, by any chance? If so, good on him. I’d say you got under an hour to live without medical attention. I may just watch.”

Gorcrow feebly raised a hand, which shook visibly. “Sleepwalker...Avaron...you need to...help me.”

“You really are a tactless little shit, aren’t you?” I smirked.

He kept talking, his voice a wheeze now. His lungs were probably ruptured, drowning him in his own blood. “You need...you need to guide the ship through. Through the storm...I’m too weak. The Pale Citizens...they...my supersoldiers are dormant...I programmed them to activate when we passed through...they can buy us sometime…”

“You know, it’s funny,” I moved closer, until I was maybe two paces from his bloody shoes. “I’ve watch a lot of people die. More than I care to think about. This is the first time I get to watch someone die twice in one day.”

There was a horrible, damp scraping sound. I realised he was trying to laugh. “No...No..Avaron...did you watch me die? Or did you watch a man in a mask die? Are you watching me die now...or just another man in another mask...perhaps I cannot die. I’m not like you...Gorcrow is not ready to die.”

The thought was horrible. I cocked back the hammer. “Only one of us dies today,”

That hacking, choleric laugh. “You won’t have come this far...if you did not want to die. There’s no way out. I know...you, Avaron. I saw your mind...I know your dreams. So if you’re so...desperate to die, then help me...let it all mean something...I can hold them back...when the Pale Citizens come...we will need to be ready…” he looked at me, and it was almost pleading. “Help me...Elijah.”

“Fuck you.”

The raised hand, quivering in pain, turn to a pointing finger. “I know...what you di -”

I shot him in the head. I shot him again as the hand continued to point. I shot him again as his tried to keep talking, tied to keep speaking. I shot him in the head until his mask mangled into nothing but blood and bone.

There was nothing but the sound of rushing wind, and the creaking groan of Cerberus falling apart. Slowly, I let my hand drop, and reholstered my revolver.

“Hmm.” I muttered. “Well, that wasn’t too bad…”

I palmed my pockets, and found a smoke, a crumpled little thing. Once again, past Elijah demonstrated his skills. I found my lighter, and popped the smoke in my mouth. Christ. It must have been twenty four hours at least since my last fag -

From the smashed, ruined corpse of Gorcrow, I heard a small click.

And I realised that it wasn’t just a gut wound his hand had been covering. There was a chaos drive there too.

Oh. Shit.

*

Zularna ran as Cerberus fell apart around her.

Gas burst from pipes. Walls snapped and ripped. The whole ship was pitching forward, making her run uphill as it were, but she kept running, vaulting obstacles and corpses as she did so.

She burst into the hangar bay as the ship shuddered as if in great pain, throwing her to one side. Blearily, she saw the skyskimmer, its thauma drives powered up, and put on an extra burst of speed. Crucius was at the gangway, waving frantically at her.

“Swiftly now, Miss Munro!” he bellowed over the sound of breaking metal.

Zularna jumped and landed aboard. As she scrambled aboard, she saw Crucius slam his hand on the skimmers console, slowly sealing the door.

“What the hell are you doing, Elijah is still out there -”

“There’s no time.” He snarled, and then yelled up to the cockpit. “Mr Rainer, get us out of here!”

“Rightio!” called back Tobias.

Breathless, aching from her run, Zularna seized Crucius by the lapel. “We’re not leaving! Elijah’s still on the bridge,”

Crucius regarded her contemptuously. “Sacrifices need to be made -”

She smashed her knee into his groin. Hard. As he howled in pain and fell forward she bolted past him and climbed up to the cockpit, just in time to see the skimmer flit out of the hangar bay doors.

Tobias, fighting with the controls, glanced at her. “Good to see you again - wait, where’s Eli?”

“He’s still on board,” she snapped back.

“What the -?”

“Crucius wanted us to leave!”

“Fuck! Where’s that little shi -”

“Downstairs, but he’s a bit busy dealing with ruptured testicles,” Zularna pulled herself into the copilot’s seat. “We can’t leave Eli!”

“No...we can’t,” Tobias wrestled with the joystick as the high wind threatened to rip the skimmer out of the sky. “I have an idea.”

They banked left, swinging the vessel’s nose around to face the seething black heart of the maelstrom. “He can’t get too us!” Zularna screamed over the bawling wind.

“That why we’re going to him,” Tobias replied, and opened up the throttle.

*

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

I launched myself backward, my revolver bucking and firing in one hand, the derringer barking in the other, as Gorcrow’s body snapped and cracked and grew. I kept firing as his remaining clothes feel away and barbed wire and metal spikes tore through his skin. His ruined, demolished face stretched as I fired and fired and he roared and roared and flames burned in his eyes. The Gorcrow-beast lunged at me and I dodged to one side. I stumbled, tripped over a dead marine, and managed to snatch up his rifle. I rolled as a great, knifed fist plunged into the ground where my head had been a second ago, and opened up with rifle. The beast screamed as bullet ricocheted off its face and chest, but with no effect, and it came on again. I threw the rifle to one side, and let my Katais snap out.

We circled each other, him flexing claws, me adopting a guard stance. He was twice my size, and about a ton heavier, but fast. He swiped at me and I caught the blow with both my blades, ducking as his other arm came in to try and cleave my head off my shoulder. He pushed forward with his legs, driving me back against the wall, until I was trapped, using every ounce of my strength to keep his claws at bay. His jaws came at my head, gnashing and biting, the fires in his eyes roaring with bloodlust.

I managed to pull one of my katais free, and slashed across that hideous face, causing the Gorcrow beast to howl in agony and release pressure just enough for me to wrench free. I dived away, hoping to get some ground on the thing when a backhand blow knocked me clean off my feet.

I plunged into the crew pit, and landed on the corpses that lay there. Blood filled my mouth, and the world rang with static. I tried to right myself, scrambling over the bodies, when a great clawed hand seized me from behind and threw me across the bridge. I hit the wall, hard, and my world went white.

I attempted to stand, and pain lanced through my body. Something was broken. Maybe several somethings. Blood gushed down the side of my face from where my head had hit the wall. My vision was peppered with black spots, and I realised, with horror, that I was dead.

The Gorcrow-beast advanced on me. It was taking its time. It had its back to the cracked canopy, and the black maw of the storm, and from where I was sprawled it looked as if were coming from the depths of that great black eye itself. I felt for my revolver. My hands weren’t working properly. I found the gun. No time to fully reload. A single bullet left in the chamber. Handy. Couldn’t kill this fucking thing with a direct headshot but I could...maybe if I could…

Fuck it. If I’m going, this piece of shit’s coming with me.

I raised the revolver to my face and whispered “Hot shot.”

The creature stopped just in front me. It regarded me, triumphantly.

I pointed my gun past it and fired. Once.

The creature cocked its head to one side. The movement seemed to say missed me.

I began to laugh. It hurt. My ribs must have been broken. But I laughed and I laughed until I coughed up great red globules of blood down my front.

My explosive SmartRounds weren’t designed to explode on impact. On the contrary, Tobias had designed them to explode three seconds after impact with the target. More likely to do damage that way, he’d said.

Good old Tobias. Goodbye, old friend.

I’m sorry, Zularna.

The canopy blew apart.

High winds plucked both of us as if we were insects, and cast us into open sky. I saw, but did not hear, the Gorcrow-beast screaming in surprise and horror. Then a bolt of lightning came out of nowhere and blew him to pieces.

And I, I began to fall, fall like a latter day Icarus from the sky.

Which brings us to now, doesn’t it?