The sky folded in on itself. Kane saw smoke, and smelled fire. There was blood in his eyes.
He was alive.
The crash.
Shit.
He sat up and grimaced. Grinding hurt rang through his knee. A steel plate had fallen on top of his right leg. He choked on the stench of burning fuel.
We always crash. I’m sick of this crap.
Kane slowly pulled himself out from under the metal. He was relieved to see that his wounds were superficial, and he imagined he had Jade to thank for that, since she’d likely shielded them with her magic — there was really no other way any of them could have survived the impact.
That’s s omething else for Vago to hold over us. Damn it.
He looked around. Fire rapidly spread through the inside of the ship. Kane winced as he pulled himself to his feet — the damage to his knee was worse than he’d thought.
The starboard wall and much of the roof were bent in and twisted. Crackling thaumaturgic wires burned grey-black smoke. T hick fluids sprayed from the torn wall s. Chunks of metal dangled from what was left of the ceiling, and sharp debris protruded from the floor where the ship had landed on something buried in the sand.
Kane grabbed Jade’s hand and pulled her up. B lood covered one side of her face, and she coughed violently in the thick smoke.
He looked around for the others.
That second tank is still out there, u nless Ronan got extremely lucky with that last barrage. And one thing we haven’t been lately is lucky.
Sol pulled himself out from under some collapsed roofing. He was bruised and covered in cuts and engine oil, and a piece of metal the size of a boomerang stuck out of his left arm. Kane winced when Sol nonchalantly pull the shrapnel out, shook away the blood, and pick ed up his M78. The big man lumbered to his feet and looked through the holes in the hull.
“ Sol!” Kane shouted. The ringing in his ears was intense, and his own words seemed to echo from miles away. “Help your girl!”
He found his MP 1 4 A and turned off the safety.
“The other tank is still out there, guys!” Kane shouted. “ Let’s get the hell out of here!”
He made his way to the cockp it. The fuselage had pushed up from the ground.
Maur was alive but badly bruised. B lood ran in to the Gol’s eyes where his forehead had smacked hard against the dash. Still, he was conscious enough to complain as Kane tried to pull him loose from the heavy straps that kept him bound to the pilot’s seat.
Pain flooded through Kane’s body. He felt a numbing sensation at the edge of his mind, a field of darkness that threatened to block out his vision. He fought it, shook himself, turned and followed Maur’s frightened gaze as he looked out the cracked viewport.
The second tank left trails of black smoke in its wake as necrotic engines propelled it straight towards them. Thick blasts of sand flowed around the vehicle in a dust tide. The tank grew larger by the second. It was so close it shook the airship’s ruined walls.
Kane looked in the sky above the tank and saw d ark shapes in the dust. T he tank had air support.
Terrific.
“ F liers!” he shouted. He ripped his boot knife free and sliced open Maur ’s harness. T he Gol jumped down, ripped a mini-Uzi away from a holster in the paneling, and raced towards the port-side hatch. “You’re welcome!” Kane shouted after him.
T he top-mounted 20mm cannons suddenly hammered to life, and the sound pounded at Kane’s skull. Ronan was still in the gunner’s se at.
Sol pulled Jade and Maur behind him as he kicked open the port hatch. They’d landed at a steep angle on top of a tall sand dune. Sol leap t out and roll ed down the slope. Jade and Maur followed, and Kane moved next to the open door.
“ Are y ou coming?!” he shouted, but Ronan couldn’ t hear him over the guns. “Hey dumbass!” Kane screamed as loud as he could. “LET’S GO!”
Ronan leapt down from t he gunner’s seat, grabbed his MP5A5, and followed.
Kane fell onto the sand and rolled down the dune. He felt his knee buckle again, and he tasted cold sand.
They were in the middle of a pale wasteland. T he Rakzeri ship had crash-landed onto a sharp stone half-buried under the sand.
It’s just our shit luck we’d hit the one random rock in the whole friggin’ desert, Kane thought bitterly. It’s like a collective skill.
The ruined barrier was less than a klick behind them to the east, and the frozen desert sloped sharply downwards to the west, towards a cluster of fallen trees and dry riverbeds.
The shrill call o f a tank shot cut the air apart like a banshee’s wail.
“ M ove! ” Kane screamed. They ran and fell down the dunes.
The shell exploded in a blast of sand, fire and sm oke. Dust roared across Kane’s vision and stung his eyes. Shrapnel hailed down. P ain lanced through his arm and b lood flew onto his face.
Everything went silent. All Kane heard was the beating of his own hammering heart. His hands found one of his blades there on the ground, and that was when he realized a ten-inch needle of steel had bore straight through his forearm. Surprisingly, h e felt no pain.
That’s probably a bad thing.
Sol was yelling at him. H e couldn’t hear a word th e big man said.
Everyone lay scattered on the ground, alive but dazed, contorted in awkward positions where they’d landed at the bottom of the dune. Smoke drifted over the m.
The flaming wreckage of the Rakzeri ship slid down the sand and straight towards them. It would crush them all in moments.
Sound crashed back into his ears like a tidal wave.
“ Kane, mo ve your ass!” Sol shouted. The criminal hel d Jade ’s arm in one hand and had Maur over his shoulder.
Ronan ran at Kane and tackled him, knocking the wind from his lungs. T hey both roll ed out of the path of the flaming wreckage. He saw an inverted image of the burning ship as it slid and tumbl ed down the dune. Black fire plumed into the air. Drifts of ash came down like snowflakes.
The f liers approached, and t he tank drew within a few hundred yards. C hains dangled from the cannons and tore the sand. S hadowy Razorwings soared in low and nearly touched the ground with their oily black bodies. Kane saw dark armored vampire riders with bladed hand-cannons and serrated swords.
Jade’s spirit was the first to strike. Undulating saws of purple light cut a swath across the sand. The Razorwings avoided the attack with ease, but she bought the team enough time to split and run in different directions.
Her arcane blades kicked up a dust storm that twisted violently into the air. The storm expanded until it enveloped the entire crash site. Kane couldn’t see more than a few yards out, but he knew that meant he couldn’t be seen, either. The sand somehow stayed out of his eyes and throat, which meant Jade shielded them from the storm’s effects.
Kane and Ronan lost sight of the others, but he knew Jade would be able to find them — he felt her telepathic presence at the edge of his mind.
The sound of the tank fa ded as it struggled through the desert storm, and the fliers’ reptilian cries echoed in the distance as they desperately search ed for the ir prey.
Kane and Ronan kept low and used the dunes for cover. They saw the silhouettes of the fliers in the grit — filled sky and heard the metal roar of massive wheels, but the sand mist concealed them, and soon they moved a safe distance away from the crash.
The dunes were steep and difficult to cross. Kane and Ronan ran up and down sand drifts, muscles aching and out of breath, until they found themselves in a shallow stone valley made of blasted stone, either an ancient riverbed or a fault line that cut straight down into the sand like a crack.
They only had to wait a few minutes before the others caught up with them. Miraculously, they hadn’t been followed.
Whirling patterns of blue — and- white rock poked through the sand. Deep shadows flowed like water through the breaks in the milky stone. The ground in the small valley was hard and cold, and they actually discovered traces of black ice.
They hid there in the crevice, concealed in side fissures in the rock. They heard the growl of some great aerial beast — not a Razorwing, and no thing that any of them recognized, but they decided they’ d rather not find out what it was — and huddled together as icy wind scraped past them.
After a while, everything was quiet. Jade’s storm faded to a drift of angry wind. Kane saw how pale and out of breath she was. No doubt she was fatigued from using her magic so much.
They waited another hour before they finally emerged. The afternoon had drawn long, and t he liquid sun hung frozen in the silver sky. Kane felt the chill of the ocean wind as surely as if they stood at the shore, but he guessed they were still a few miles out…and that was when he realized he didn’t actually have a clue where they were.
“Do you know our location, Jade?” he asked. “I completely lost my bearings when we ran away from the crash.”
“With no supplies,” Sol nodded glumly.
“Shit,” Ronan said.
“Damn it,” Kane echoed.
“Maur is not pleased.”
“I’m with Maur,” Ronan said. “Do we even know where the ship is now? We’ve been running around the dunes for a couple of hour s.”
“Jade?” Kane asked quietly. She looked exhausted, and more than a bit panicked. “Can you get us back to the ship?”
“ I think so,” she said hesitantly. “ But whatever we saw in those ruins back there is making it hard for my spirit to search the area.”
“Your storm work ed,” Ronan said sternly.
“ Using my spirit for violence and using it to search an area are two entirely different things,” Jade said. “Whatever that phenomenon was, it’s been well hidden, and whatever magic was used to conceal it i s ma king this entire region unstable.”
They walked beneath the pale and open sky. Kane heard howls in the distance. The wind was cold and sharp. His body was sore, and his knee ached like someone had jabbed a needle into it. Still, the fact that ever y step didn’t make him double over in agony was a good sign. He’d bandaged his arm — he didn’t remember removing the sliver of steel, but it was long gone — and Jade’s spirit had staunched the bleeding. Even then, it still throbbed and burned like crazy.
They came to the top of a steep rise and found a good vantage of the desert. Thick drifts of cobalt dust shifted in the distance like corroding walls. Storm clouds brewed far to the east. T here were few discernible landmarks they could use to get their bearings: just the ubiquitous sand, rising and falling with no pattern or rhyme, cold and glassy, striated in bands of black and white. There was no sign of the ship, and it wa s impossible to even pick up the smoke trail with so much dust and sand in the air.
“Maur wants to know what the hell that was — that vision!” the Gol said.
“Yeah, that would be nice to know…” Ronan echoed.
“Can we worry about that shit later?” Kane said angrily. “We need to figure out where in the hell we are. We can worry about what we did or didn’t see after we make sure we’re not going to freeze to death out here.”
Kane saw everyone’s faces change at that, and he was glad for it. They had absolutely zero supplies from the airship with them, and if the sun went down they’d be in for a difficult and potentially lethal night…and that was just from the cold. He hadn’t even considered the predators or vampires.
“Got a ny clue as to how we do that?” Ronan asked.
“Well…I have a compass in my knife,” Kane said. “ Let’s give that a try. ”
What they also had were the map coordinates to Blacksand, and even though they m ust have been several hours out it was still better than nothing, since it seemed unlikely they’d be able to retrace their steps back to the crash site.
They marched. The going was difficult, and every time they started to make some headway they found themselves in a dust storm or standing in an area of dangerously soft sand. The wind hounded them every step of the way and sliced through their clothes.
Kane’s skin turned raw from the cold. Sand invaded his boots and made his feet feel like lead. He, Ronan and Sol all took turns carrying Maur: it wasn’t that the Gol was feeling weak, but with the difficult terrain and the ir desire to make haste he needed help keep ing up with the group. Jade kept everyone as warm as she could with her spirit — it was the only reason they hadn’t come down with hypothermia — but doing so kept her constantly fatigued, and if she kept it up too long she’d end up wearing herself out.
Distant animal howls echoed through th e hollow sky, which turned vein- blue as the sun slowly sank towards the shifting horizon.
“Was that a portal?” Sol asked. A great deal of time had passed in near silence. Their feet lifted and fell with a monotonous rhythm. Kane and Ronan led the group with Jade close behind them; Sol had Maur on his shoulders, and they brought up the rear. The sky was dark and thin. They saw by the light of dusk, and that light was fading fast.
Kane’s mind had wandered. He couldn’t even remember what he’d been thinking about.
“No,” Ronan said flatly. “We were…hallucinating, or something.”
The vision. They’re talking about the vision, that shit we saw before we were attacked.
“ Maur thinks it was a portal,” Maur said.
“ I’m inclined to agree,” Jade said over the hiss of the rising wind. “ And I think it’s what the vampires are out here looking for.”
“ Yeah, you said that earlier,” Kane said. “The question is whether you knew that before we came out here.”
“Say what?” Sol said.
“Oh come on,” Ka ne said. They kept walking. “Are y ou trying to tell me you didn’t know about the Gates to Hell back there?”
“No,” Jade said. “Not that we have to explain anything to you, but no: we didn’t know about it. All w e knew was that the vampires were at our borders. You were supposed to help us stop them.”
“And you still are,” Sol said.
“This sucks,” Ronan groaned.
“What, fulfilling your end of the bargain?” Jade snapped.
“Being stuck out in the desert, hunted by vampires, completely lost, knowing there’s a portal to hell nearby, trapped with people I’d just as soon cut open as help survive.” Ronan made a p oint to smile. “Like I said…t his sucks.”
No one really had an answer to that.
They walked. Kane thought he spied lights in the distance, but the windblown waves of black dust made it difficult to tell. He saw the shadow s of giant fliers, but they moved askance, like black paper birds in the dying light.
Wait…
He looked closer. The shapes grew larger. L ights cut through the quiet sandstorm, halcyon strobes and hooded flood light s attached to steel machines, low-flying vessels with curved sails and jagged hulls.
“Do you see that?” Jade asked.
Kane stared.
“Yeah. I do.”
The ships — there were three of them — had clearly seen the m, as well. The vessels had been headed south, but suddenly they veered east on an intercept course. T here would be no avoiding the ships, not with how fast they moved, so Kane readied his weapon and signaled for everyone to move.
As the skiffs drew within a few hundred yards, Kane saw that they were shaped like bladed planks. They had low-dragging rudders that nearly scraped the ground. L arge chainguns and recoilless rifles were mounted on the forward hulls. A handful of human-sized silhouettes stood on the decks of each vessel.
“Those aren’t vampire ships,” Ronan said, and Sol nodded in agreement.
They took cover behind a sharply curved dune and watch ed as the vessels approach ed.
Not like this dune will give us much cover against those chain guns, Kane thought. If they decide to start shooting, we’re screwed, no matter where we’re standing.
The ships accelerated and spread out. Their turbine engines were quiet. S torms of dust trailed in their wake.
The vessels were about 300 yards away when a blast tore through the air. T he lead ship exploded.
Hot wind flashed over Kane, and he had to shiel d his eyes against the light of the flames. Smoking metal and chunks of steel fell to the ground.
The vampire tank roared over the dunes to the north. The two Razorwings accompanied it, slavering razor jaws and armored wings blocking out the sky. They flew in fast and low and mov ed with the grace of swimmers.
“Ronan, right flank!” Kane shouted. “I’ll take left! Sol, straight up the middle!”
“That’s what she said!” Sol laughed, and Kane actually had to restrain himself from turning and shooting the man.
The skiffs turned, caught unawares. Kane was close enough now to see that the crewmen weren’t of any race he recognized — they were humanoid in size and shape, but the ir gre asy grey skin was covered in scales. They wore haphazard scraps of armor, aviation hats and steel shoulder plates, and they were equipped with crude and archaic weapons. Every one of them wore a gasmask.
The chainguns roared with pulsing steel noise as they opened up on the tank.
The Razorwings came in fast. T he chainguns couldn’t track them. The first one swooped in low over a skiff and snatched two crewmen off the deck, leaving a spray of blood and screams in it s wake as it flew past. The creatures still on deck fired at the flying reptile with small arms, but the rounds ricocheted off its scaly hide. The second Razorwing dove beneath the other skiff and swiped at the lower rudders, which crack ed and fell to the ground.
Sol hammered the nearest Razorwing with his M78. The steady stream of bullets echoed like a quiet storm. Jade and Maur retreated back behind the dunes, while Kane, Ronan and Sol moved within a hundred yards of the nearest skiff.
The air was thick with exhaust and the smell of fuel. The vampire tank released another shot, which flew past the skiffs and tore into the desert. Sand exploded like a dry geyser. Kane and the others charged through clouds of dust.
The Razorwing turned towards them. Kane fired at the beast as it charged at Sol. The trio of vampires on the Razorwing’s back fired hand-cannons and a needle rifle, but the speed of their mount threw off their aim. The beast flew in a straight line towards Sol so it could swallow him up in its sizeable jaws.
Kane ducked as the beast flew past him, and he barely d odged the metal-plated wing. He fired a s he rolled and managed to hit one of the vampires, who tumbled off the deck. A mooring wire was wrapped around the vampire’s leg, and he was dragged across the sand behind the Razorwing.
The bladed tail swooped at Kane, and he barely jumped clear of the scythed limb. He threw himself forward and flung a grenade with all his strength before he landed face first in the sand.
The grenade exploded in the air next to the flying lizard. Blood sprayed from a gaping hole in its flesh. S hattered ribs jutted out be neath its damaged wing. The beast fell to the ground with a thunderous crash. Sol and Ronan take position and he ld their ground while they hammer ed the dying reptile with gun fire.
The damaged skiff went down behind them. Metal cracked and flew away as the s ails snapped. The remaining crewmen had secured themselves to the deck with rope s and chain s. S econds after the skiff noisily touched down, the vampire tank destroyed it with another roaring blast. Steel and smoke ripped away as the vehicle exploded.
Kane stumbled backwards. Hot wind scoured his face. A shockwave hit him with the force of a hammer and knocked him to the ground.
M ore explosions. Kane rubbed grit and sweat from his eyes. Ronan and Sol were on top of the dead Razorwing, where they battled its vampire riders in a blur of blades, claws and gunfire.
Kane saw t he second skiff t a k e aim at the advancing tank with its recoilless rifle. Heavy clouds of dust and shadow trailed the vampire vehicle.
“Jade!” he shouted. He looked back and saw her and Maur peek over the dune. “Get that tank’s attention!”
Jade’s spirit spun forward in a lance of ice-blue fire. Frost vapor s scorched the ground white. The spirit tore through the sand and caused an eruption of frozen dust.
“Now get down!” he shou ted. Kane ran towards the tank and bank ed right, firing his M 1 4 as he ran. T he turret turned his way.
“C over!” he shouted. H e dove down as the t ank fired. The blast cracked open the sky. Grisly charcoal smoke poured out of the bladed turret.
The shell landed somewhere behind him. A cyclonic storm of debris pelted his body with splinters of shattered stone and sand. Kane folded himsel f and shield ed his head and neck.
Kane was dizzy as he stood up. He felt almost drunk. H e saw the dark shadow of the tank through the unnatural fog. Black steam curled into the air, and even with his ears ringing Kane still heard ghastly incorporeal defenses circle round the tank, a choir of banshees fused into a shield. They only discorporated when the weapons fired, and Kane hope d the skiff would get a shot off before the shield fully reformed.
The shrill blast of the recoilless rifle howled through the air and squeeze d through th e undead shielding just in time. Kane heard armor crack. The tank tumbled out of the smog of undead vapor. S teel and bone s and chain s scattered across the pale sand. The roar of the crash was deafening.
The tank ro ll ed to a stop. One wheel was gone, two more had shattered, and the gun turret had snapped off. Kane heard combat behind him and felt the air turn cold from Jade’s spirit, but when he looked back over his shoulder all he saw were drifts o f dark smoke.
H e hesitated, and moved towards the crashed tank. His body was wracked with fatigue, and the sharp pain in his knee gave him pause.
Cowboy up, dude.
The tank was still. A chunk of loose steel fell from the mangled turret. Kane’s feet kicked up sand as he jogged down the dune. H e slowed as he drew close the vehicle, and kept his M14 aimed at the wide-bodied tank hatch and the rear doors.
He’d never been th at close to a vampire assault tank before. The outer hull was black steel and bone plate. Blood dripped from the rivets, and the chains that dangled from the sides were covered in tiny spikes that ooz ed dark fluid. A small anti-personnel gun — probably a nail launcher — was pointed right at him. He hadn’t even noticed until he was practically right on top of the tank.
His heart froze, but when he was still alive a few seconds later he realized he was probably safe.
I f any Suckheads we re still in there they would have fired that thing at me by now.
The tank oozed mechanical fluid. A gaping hole in the hull billowed dark fumes.
The skiff flew up behind him and came to a sudden stop less than a hundred yards away. Scorch marks marred the face of the desert-tan vessel. S moke churned from the lower exhaust ports near the tilting turbine engines, which kicked up the sand into a small dust storm. The curled sails had folded back like a dark fan, and the chainguns mounted on the forecastle still spewed smoke. The recoilless rifle was covered with paintings of skulls.
The grey-skinned reptilian crewmen regarded him with haunting yellow eyes just visible over the gasmasks that cover ed the lower halves of their faces. T hey aimed one of the chainguns at him.
“What the hell?! ” Kane shouted. “I just did you a favor, you morons!”
They made no response. It occurred to him they probably didn’t speak any human tongue, and that he, as his dad used to say, was now well up Shit Creek without a paddle.
There were five crewmen visible, and three of them aim ed weapons at him. One of the riflemen spoke, but whatever came out of his mouth didn’t sound anything at all like language, more like a series of metallic grunts.
Kane put his hands up, but he didn’t drop his weapon. That s eemed to appease them. At the very least, they didn’t shoot him.
“I have no idea who you are, and I can’t understand what the hell you’re saying,” Kane said with a smile. “ For all I know you’re telling me how sexy I am. ”
Something exploded inside the tank. The reptile skiff’s guns swiveled back towards the smoking vehicle as the exit hatch flew open.
A vampire emerged from the wreckage. It was clothed in pale red armor, wore a jagged metal facemask and dark goggles, and held a bone-rifle. Kane dove forward and barely dodged a barrage of needles. The skiff riders hammered the vampire with the chaingun and their rifles, but the undead still managed to fire back at them even as it was torn apart. A barrage of eight-inch bone shards rammed into the skiff. One took a grey-skinned rifleman in the throat and threw him backwards.
Something else emerged from the crash, a bulky and armored shape, four-legged and black. Its horns glistened with some sort of oily and undoubtedly poisonous substance. Barbed chains wrapped around the horns and linked into the beast’s iron jaw plating. Undead nostrils steamed dark fumes as it plowed its way out of the side of the vessel.
“You have got to be kidding me…” Kane said.
The undead Ebonback stamped its feet. It was five- feet at the shoulder s, a tank on legs. Its dank eyes were rotted and mostly gone, and its flesh was riddled with heavy scars. Viscous red and black fluid seeped out from under sheets of iron that had been fused and hammered into place on its bulky corpse. A dark saddle had been riveted to its back. The creature exhaled, and a thick cloud of frozen onyx fumes billowed down around its cloven steel feet.
The beast stamped again, and charged at Kane. He fired his M14, but the bullets bounced harmlessly off the beast’s metal hide.
Kane turned and ran towards the skiff. Sweat poured down his face, and his heart hammered. He expected to feel the horn s punch through his back at any second. F ear raced down his spine.
The creature was right on him. Kane threw himself forward and rolled under the advancing skiff. Sand and stone cut into his arms. The Ebonback collided with the ship and knocked it backwards with a loud clang. Blood and necrotic fluid gushed out from between its armor plates.
The skiff floated back and listed to one side. The beast stumbled, its momentum broken, but he knew it would recover in just a few seconds.
The M14 was empty, so he dropped it and pulled out a grenade as the Ebonback lowered its head and readied to charge at him again. Cold air filled Kane’s lungs as he breathed in, waiting for his end.
The horn dipped, and the beast charged. Its thunderous approach shook the ground. Kane reached behind his back for his combat sword, a short blade with a razor point.
He saw movement over the ridge. H e didn’t want the others to see him die.
The beast scooped its head low as it drew close. Kane darted to the side and rammed the point of his blade into the creature’s eye. Black blood gushed out and sprayed onto his bare arms. He s mell ed grave rot and turpentine.
Kane fell backwards as the creature raced past him. He threw the live grenade in the Ebonback’s path as he rolled down the dune and folded himself into a ball.
The grenade went off. Chunks of black steel and meat pummeled the ground.
“Kane!” Ronan shouted from over the dune, but it was too late.
Something struck him from behind, some sort of webbing that latched onto hi m and sent volts of electricity through his body. Kane cried out, convuls ed, and blacked out.
Kane woke on his back, staring up at the sky. H e felt nauseous, his stomach was clenched, and his hands were asleep because they’d been bound tightly behind his back. There was blood on his face, and his legs were twisted uncomfortably on the metal floor.
He was moving. The world shifted. He turned his eyes from the ic y sun and saw brown stones and low drifts of black sand.
W e ’ re close to the coast.
Jade was there with him, a s were Maur and Sol. A ll of them had been bound with lengths of chain secured to iron loops on the deck of the skiff. T here was no sign of Ronan.
Kane tried to speak, but his mouth was dry. His shoulders ached, and he tasted sand on his tongue.
The skiff moved at a fair pace, especially considering the damage it had suffered during the battle. Smoke churned from its aft end, but the engine sounded like it r an smoothly.
Well that’s a relief, he thought. At least we won’t crash, so we’ll live long enough to find out what these freaks plan to do to us.
“You guys…” He coughed. The scent of vomit filled his nostrils. “You guys ok?”
“They have Ronan,” Jade said.
The skiff bobbed up and down as it hugged a terrain covered in cold dunes and low rocky hills. The ground was deep red, like blood had dried on the sand. Kane smelled salt and rot. He tried to sit up, and failed. Dark clouds waited for them over the sea to the west. The atmosphere was cold and damp, and his skin was freezing. He remained on his side — at least if he stayed like that his hands weren’t crushed beneath his own weight.
“Interrogation?” he asked.
“Maybe,” Sol asked. “But they don’t seem to understand us anymore than we understand them, so I’m not sure what the hell they’d be asking him.”
“Any clue as to who they are?” Kane asked.
The recoilless rifle had been covered and sec ured with a tarp, but the chain guns were manned and pointed out into the wastes. A pilot stood at the helm, which was just a simple shaft of metal covered with levers and cranks. None of the crew paid any attention to the prisoners.
“They could be Grey Clan,” Jade said quietly. “No one knows what ever happened to them.”
The reptilian crewmen were spread out across the uneven deck. Their scaly reptilian flesh was ic y grey and oozed secretion s like dirty oil. They wore g as mask s wrapped around pugnacious lizard-like jaw s, and their eyes were solid yellow. S caly fingers ended in sharp claws, and their bod ies w ere wrapped in mismatch ed leather and metal armor. They carried o ld-fashioned Colt revolver s, razorwire-bound batons th at sparked with electricity, short serrated knives and bandoliers stuffed with grenades.
“Grey Clan… well… maybe… ” Kane said.
A hatch opened that led below deck; it was so carefully concealed Kane hadn’t even noticed it before it swung outwards. A nother tall grey-skinned humanoid emerged wearing a dark and tattered cape that rippled in the wind. Its eyes lock ed on Kane.
“Nice cape, Emperor Ming,” Kane spat.
The creature growled something that might have been an insult. It lifted Kane up by the arm as another crewman undid his chains. Kane considered resisting, but he knew that w ould be dangerous until he knew where Ronan was.
I’ve managed to screw things up so far, he thought. I n eed to make sure I do n’t get any one killed.
Stumbling and dizzy, Kane tried his best not to trip and fall as they led him below deck.