The first blast of the gas dome swept into the throne room and the crowd, until
that moment hypnotized by each savage refinement as practised on Dara's helpless naked
form, froze. All eyes turned toward the elegant columned facade and saw reflected in the
long pool before the throne room, a blinding sheet of flame. The ground rocked, the air
was filled with the bellowing roar of explosions, one on another, followed with the
buffeting of shock waves. There was a hot, suffocating smell of burning gasoline.
Dara was unaware of the cataclysm. She lay on her bier, blood flowing from her
chest like a river. Bon-ner hardly heard the explosion. His eyes were fixed on Dara,
trying to transmit life to her, pumping his thoughts into her brain like a blood
transfusion.
Starling bounced up the stairs into the throne room, the Sisters and Cooker
fanning out behind him. The dome continued to explode, boom following boom, like a
thunderstorm in hell.
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"Evening, folks!" screamed Starling and the Steyr started spitting
bullets into the packed crowd. Courtiers began falling like scythed wheat. The Sisters set
up a gutslamming field of fire, chopping down a phalanx of Radleps before they could bring
their weapons to bear. Bonner's force took the element of surprise and used it for all it
was worth. They fired so rapidly and their coming was so unexpected that having surprise
on their side was as valuable as having another ten men with guns.
The Mean Brothers ran into the crowd, their crude weapons harvesting skeins of
flesh with an even more savage sweep. The ten fighters in Bonner's force fought like a
hundred. In seconds courtiers were dying as if they were the victims of a strong and
virulent plague. People screamed, clutching at their wounds, their cries floating up to
the roof of the marble chamber. Their anguished yells, mixed with the constant and
bone-rocking detonations that rolled over them from the gas house made the throne room
resound with a bestial concerto that seemed to have been composed by the devil himself.
Bloodlust seized the attackers. Starling, the Sisters, Cooker, even the Mean
Brothers felt that driving sense of hate pulse through their bodies like a murderous, hot
liquor, intoxicating, satisfying ... It drove them on, making them mad for blood, thirsty
and anxious for more.
"Burn," screamed Cooker, "burn you fuckers, bum!" The thrower
hit the living with sickening
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accuracy. The air was filled suddenly with the sweet smell of burning meat.
The Mean Brothers slashed back and forth with their iron weapons as if they were
cutting their way through dense underbrush. Blood ran down the shafts of their axe and
shovel, staining their arms, flecking across their furry chests, splattering into their
lips. They tasted the gore of their enemies and felt rejuvenated, and they were egged on
to a fury of destruction and vigorous death-dealing that their immense strength surged to
fulfill.
The heads of the axe and shovel became embedded in the bodies of their victims and
the one with the shovel simply yanked the blade from the body of the Radlep he had
impaled. The one with the axe rocked the shaft back and forth unable to free it. He pulled
his victim to the ground and jammed his foot into the man's stomach to give him the
leverage required to remove the heavy axe head. A Stormer dropped to his knees before one
of them, his voice unable to form the plea for mercy that the features on his face plainly
telegraphed. The Mean Brother, the heavy muscles on his back flexing, swept his axe into
the man's neck, severing his head through the thin bridge of flesh and bone in a single
blow.
Blood slicked across the floor a quarter inch deep. Those still alive slipped and
fell, wailing. Starling and the Sisters stitched bullets across the writhing mass,
chopping a dozen bodies into a hundred pieces. The two Stormers that were guarding Bonner
flopped to the floor and lay there in blood, firing wildly at
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the point at which they thought Starling and the Sisters stood. The shifting,
screaming crowd blocked their view and some of their bullets cut down some of their own.
They fired crazily, terrified and only concerned with their own survival. Suddenly the
Mean Brothers stood over them. Veins pulsed in the giants' faces and they whipped their
weapons in a vicious downswing sweeping into the Stormers' soft bodies as if they were
clay men. The Mean Brother who carried a shovel freed Bonner of his constraints. The Mean
Brother with the axe held it out to Bonner, urging him to take it.
"No," said Bonner, "you need it."
The Mean held out his hands. These are the only weapon I need, he seemed to say,
and, as if to illustrate his point he grabbed a Stormer who cowered nearby and, picking
the man up as if he was a doll, slammed him to the ground. He took hold of the man's jaw,
forcing his teeth apart until the man's fleshy cheeks split. The Mean rocked the hapless
Stormer's jaw back and forth like a barn door on its hingethen, with a special burst
of effort he tore the jawbone from its socket. The Stormer screamed a scream that was
choked with blood and his pink tongue slathered about like a fat eel suddenly rousted from
its hiding place. The Mean shrugged at Bonner. It's easy, he was saying, you take the axe.
Bonner took the axe and felt the stickiness of blood on his hands, the shaft ran
red with the blood of scores of people. He strode through the crowd oblivious to the
bullets and knelt at Dara's side. Her
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eyes were open but her mind was miles away, lost beyond the forest of pain and
humiliation that she had travelled through that long night. Her breath was shallow and
forced, her chest a mass of blood and tattered skin. Bonner gently laid his forehead
against hers.
"Dara . . . Dara . . . Dara, do you hear me?" Her lips were frozen in a
rictus of death but she hissed something through her ripped lips. Bonner leaned closer to
catch her words. She whispered again. Bonner strained to hear over the screams and the
explosions. He wrapped his strong arms around her and felt her frail body strain with the
attempt at speech.
"Kill me," she hissed.
He looked down at his Dara, the woman he loved, the woman he would willingly have
died for, the woman that gave his violent life meaning. She was a bloody wreck, her body
so fragile housing a mind so tough, so singleminded, she had become the delicate
battlefield upon which hate had played its final, deadly chord.
"Kill me."
Bonner's hands closed like steel bands around his beloved's throat. He squeezed
and a tiny smile, the smile of release floated across her scarred features. Slowly, he
felt the life flow from her. Dara released herself to his grip, confident that he would
see her through the torment of this foul world that she had tried to change. As the last
of her young life drained out of her she
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Suddenly the Mean threw down his shovel and gestured at the Radlep. He pointed at
his massive chest. Take your best shot, he was saying. The Radlep saw his chance and
lunged. The hard, hairy arm of the Mean Brother clotheslined him, crook of his arm
settling like a vise around the Radlep's scaly neck. Instinctively, the Mean Brother
slammed the Radlep's head down onto his upraised knee, exulting in the soft give of the
man's face. The little bones in the Radlep's neck snapped and cracked like firecrackers.
The gas dome continued to explode, blowing into the throne room a sheet of noise
so loud the detonations of Starling's arrows were drowned out.
Leather was screaming, staring at his severed hand as it lay on the red, wet
floor. Bonner swung again and Leather threw up his arms to protect himself, his chopped
wrist spraying blood. He whimpered and rolled and screamed when the axe tore through his
good hand, scattering his fingers.
Radleps were pouring from their headquarters like maddened bees from their hive.
They made for the throne room, guns blazing.
Starling reached for another arrow and found that he had only three left. Starling
had no intention of dying in that bloody pit. He decided it was time to pull the crew out.
Cooker was coming to the same conclusion. He pumped up his tanks and tried to shoot a bolt
of flame but only a dribble of fire tumbled from his thrower. He was out of gas. He paused
a moment and listened to the screams and to
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the constant explosion of the gas dump. This was the happiest night of his life.
Clara's gun chattered and stopped. She was out of bullets. The bodies of four of
her sisters lay at her feet.
"Time to split," she yelled at Starling. She stooped and scooped up
Jamie's Iver Johnson, pushing her body roughly to one side. There would be time to grieve
later.
"Right, Sister," said Starling, grabbing an M-16, once the proud
possession of a Radlep.
A Radlep had tried to get between Bonner's axe and Leather. In the moment that
Bonner turned to defend himself, dispatching the Radlep as if he was a sapling that had to
be cut down. Leather made his escape. He burrowed into a mountain of torn, bloody dead
flesh and lay still hoping to escape Bonner and his blade.
Crazed with hate, Bonner's eyes darted about the room. "Where-
are you?" he yelled. "Where are you?"
Bonner swung around, the axe raised when he felt a hand on his
shoulder. But it was a Mean Brother.
"Don't mess with me, man," said Bonner. "I got to find him."
"Bonner," shouted Starling, "everybody out." "I'm not
leaving," said Bonner, his blazing eyes still surveying the carnage of the room.
Starling shrugged and signalled to the Mean Brother. The Mean reared back and
Bonner felt the man's fist,
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as weighty as a load of bricks slam into his head. Bonner slumped, the Mean
catching him before he hit the ground. He shouldered Bonner's compact body as if it were
that of a child, and gently took the axe away from him.