Ghosts of Iron by Marc Collins

Author:Marc Collins
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2019-10-15T13:53:09+00:00

About the Author

Marc Collins is a speculative fiction author living and working in Glasgow, Scotland. ‘Ghosts of Iron’ is his first published work for Black Library. When not dreaming of the far future he works in Pathology with the NHS.

An extract from Titanicus.

The auspex returns seemed to suggest that the engine had retreated behind the burning shell of the tannery and moved away, but the auspex had been dropped several times and had taken at least one las deflection that had crazed its screen. Its main display kept milking out, and Goland trusted it about as far as he could sling it.

Goland had a nasty feeling he would end up slinging it. When the moment came, he and his men would have to throw everything they had at the enemy, literally everything.

It was the middle of the day, but it felt like the middle of the night. The sky was low and filthy black, and the only illumination came from the burning ruins around them. Acid rain sheeted down, transmuting the thick brick dust underfoot into a squelchy paste. Though torrential, the rain was failing to quench the firestorms. There was a constant, pressurised sizzle as water met fire, and veils of steam, rolling like fog, further occluded their visibility.

This was what hell looked like, Goland decided. He corrected himself. This was hell.

Daric Goland knelt down in the mire and fumbled with the auspex set. His wet fingers kept slipping on the handheld’s fascia. Somewhere behind him, a man was shrieking long, awful screams into the rain. There was no pain relief left, no ampoules of morphine, no medics, no hope.

The auspex started to give Goland a partial bounce, a freak return. He cursed quietly. What did that mean? Was there something lurking behind the tannery or not? He shook the device, and slapped it against his thigh, hoping the bounce was just an imaging artefact conjured by the cracked display.

Some heavy structure, possibly an arch or a retaining wall, suddenly fell in a few hundred metres to his left. It made a noise like an avalanche as it toppled into the inferno that had brought it down. Sparks burst up like a swarm of fireflies, and the rain consumed them. The shivering crash set his men off.

‘Settle. Settle!’ Goland yelled. ‘It’s just fire-damage! Hold your places!’

Their nerves were shredded. It was a wonder most of them hadn’t run already. They had been mobilised against an enemy that outclassed them in every detail and dimension. This was no infantry war. This hadn’t ever been an infantry war.

To them, and to Goland, the collapsing structure had sounded like the doom-step of an engine. In these tight, high-walled manufactory streets, as they had learned to their cost, a collapsing wall was often the only warning they got of an engine steering in to attack.

A noxious odour began to drift down the narrow sub-street. Goland gagged slightly. The fire in the tannery had reached the hide stores, and the air started to reek of burning flesh and melting fat.

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