Hell's Maw

* * *

BRIGID WORKED THE tripod gun as she responded to Kane. “Find some way to stop the heat beam,” she said.

“Like how?” Kane replied, the note of desperation clear in his voice.

Brigid and her colleague were working the tripod guns mounted on the back of the wag in fits. The whole wag was warm from the effect of the heat beam, and the guns were threatening to overheat. The wag zigzagged across the field, bumping over ruts in the soil and tangled grass as a stream of bullets followed them from the high-mounted railguns, spitting sparks from the metal sides of the wag. One of the sacks of grain burst under the assault, spilling its contents in a cloud of yellow dust.

“Overheat it,” Brigid said in a sudden moment of inspiration.

* * *

“OVERHEAT IT?” KANE repeated as he chased after the machine, which was striding after Brigid’s wag. “How?”

“A weapon like that must throw out a lot of heat to operate,” Brigid reasoned.

Kane’s eyes roved across the metal surface of the walking weapon as Brigid spoke.

“If you can find the source and block it, you could—”

“Got it!” Kane said, spying a dark patch on the back of the dangling cab where wispy steam was emanating. He ran after the retreating vehicle, commanding his Sin Eater back into its hidden holster, and a moment later he leaped onto the swinging left leg as it hurtled past. Clinging there, Kane reached up, using the scaffold-like leg as a ladder, finding handholds and footholds as he ascended the swaying limb of the moving vehicle.

Bullets drummed against the cab above him as Kane scrambled up past the first knee joint, ten feet above the ground. Then he felt the whole vehicle vibrate and the heat beam fired again, cleaving the back from the remaining wag in an explosion of melted metal and tossed grain.

Kane clung tightly to the leg as it swung forward, then came down again, stomping on the edge of the wag where it was melting. Brigid and her companion leaped from the back of the wag as the colossus took another step, crushing the back end of the vehicle. It was obvious that its occupants did not mind losing a little of their spoils if it meant getting rid of the competition.

The cab turned as Brigid reached for the driver’s door. The door was jammed where the metal had become buckled under the assault, and Kane watched helplessly for a moment as his red-haired colleague wrenched at the door. As she did so, the boxy cab of the walker whirred on its hydraulics, drawing around to line up the railguns on the people below.

“Hey, ugly!” The shout was harsh and it came from behind Kane and the walker.

Kane looked down, saw Domi standing there with her Detonics pistol held in a two-handed grip and aimed high at the cab of the walker. The pistol’s silver finish glinted in the overcast light. The pistol bucked in her hands as Domi sent shot after shot into the side window of the boxy cab, firing over and over as the walking machine began to slowly react. The glass fractured, spiderwebbing in an instant but still holding in place.

Kane was close enough to the cab that he heard the voices coming from within. “Turn us around,” a woman’s voice bellowed. “Blast that pale-skinned bitch off the face of the Earth!”

Kane clung on to the leg as the cab swung around, but below Domi was already racing away, keeping up a circuit around her would-be killer as its pilots tried to affix her in their sights. It was a dangerous ploy, but it gave Brigid enough time to get the wounded driver out of her own wag, forcing the bent door open with six hard kicks of her heeled boot.

Kane did what little he could to help, reaching into a pocket of his jacket and priming the device he found there. It looked like a ball bearing, perfectly spherical with a silver finish, roughly two inches in diameter. There was a hidden seam running along the device’s center, and it took Kane less than a breath to find it and twist it, setting the device to detonate. He dropped it then, not really able to throw it the way he would have preferred, and turned his face away as the sphere fell.

The device blew seven feet above the ground, just ahead of and between the walker’s massive feet, unleashing a violent burst of light and sound as if a lightning bolt had struck the earth. The walker was unharmed but its occupants were momentarily dazzled.