Chapter 16

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No, they were not wolves. The throat of a living creature of flesh and blood could hardly make such a sound. It sounded more like a long musical note that hung in the heavy, musty air, unwilling to stop. It was an unpleasant, ominous note, most suitable for accompanying a horror movie. This kind of 'music' made her want to drop everything, to hide under a rusty car, to pull her hood up. And clasping her eyes shut, not thinking about anything, just praying that the Emperor would protect her because there was no one else. Olga felt her hands trembling, not with a nasty little shiver, but for real, with her hands dancing like a guitarist with an invisible instrument.

"Don't be afraid," the servitor said. "I will protect."

The cybernetic man himself inspired some confidence because of his ample size, but even more so because of his rugged multi-barrelled weapon. Fear of Bertha, as well as the thoroughness of Luct, made Olga twitch between the flamethrower and the servitor - more toward duty or safety.

"Over there!" Bertha pointed to a doorway with the only hinge knocked out and sagging. "Take up defensive positions!"

"No!" exclaimed Fidus. It was as if he had concluded something important that could not be delayed.

"Betrayer?" The Mentor's gawked, and the shotgun aimed right at the Inquisitor's nose. "You don't follow orders."

"It's a 'pocket'!" Fidus repeated the same incomprehensible and inappropriate word again. But now he explained. "Encapsulated area of space. A hiding place. A room to hide out in. Where you can't get in unless you have the right keys."

"So what?!" Bertha yelled, turning her head around in an attempt to calculate the exact direction of the future and inevitable attack. In vain.

The sound was getting closer. The musical howl now reminded Olga of the zombie chorus from Dawn of the Dead. A single thousand-voiced shriek seemed to come from everywhere, closing in on the surroundings. In any case, the small squad was too exhausted to escape. Unless they abandoned all their equipment...

"You can't just get out of the 'pocket,'" Fidus chose his words hastily. "But it can be 'poisoned'."

"What?!"

"This capsule is not only a space capsule but also a time capsule!" Kryp began to wave his hands tragically with an expression of despair on his dirty face. Apparently so he tried to convey the idea to his interlocutors in the most expressive and understandable way. "That's why it's so safe! But if you stick something unfamiliar into it, it will work like a metaphysical poison! The 'pocket' will begin to be poisoned!"

"I don't understand shit," the mentor said almost calmly as if to draw a line. "It's bullshit."

"What would it take to do that?" The Priest suddenly intervened in the hurried conversation.

"Destroy," Kryp breathed out. "We'd be strangers here, and that's why the demonic thing wouldn't mess with us. We have to make ourselves even more unwanted. And pray that it works. If we hold our ground inside the house, we can hold out until we run out of ammo. And then that's it."

"Bullshit," the monk echoed Bertha's opinion, then thought a moment more and added. "But there's still no better plan."

The Priest exchanged a glance with Bertha, and they both nodded at each other.

"Brothers and sisters!" the monk cried out. His throat sobbed and wheezed like a ruined speaker, making the preacher's cry sound particularly terrifying, like a trumpet voice coming from beyond. Perhaps from that very 'warp'.

"It's bad enough that we're in deep shit! And even worse!"

Optimistic, thought Olga, surprisingly sensible and calm. The priest knows how to inspire.

But the monk's words sounded somehow... blunt. And honest.

And still no chicken out, my friends!" In some alien argo the Priest continued his mini-sermon. "Because if it's too bad it doesn't end there."

He thought for a moment and then repeated with unwavering confidence:

"No, it doesn't."

Olga, with the same detached calmness, realized that if now the pastor began to promise imminent salvation or bullshit about the mercy of the Emperor - that would be scary and helpless. But as it was, the Priest did not promise the impossible and was honest with his flock. Perhaps because he respected his colleagues too much in their difficult occupation and did not pour sweet water into their ears about obligatory salvation. And that was worth the price.

The twilight was thickening, but the air itself exuded a putrid glow, replacing the light of the moon (which the Beacon didn't have anyway). In the unsteady, dancing shadows emerged hunched over figures, as if woven from little ashy whirlwinds. They howled in unison, in the same tone, but as if transmitting directly to their brains a boundless sadness and wicked sadness. Not like the house. The disembodied voice there was sad, too. Rather, it was like an angry, disembodied soul that had long since been disembodied and had been collecting hatred for the living for centuries. Hatred and thirst for warm blood.

"Maybe we should go inside after all?" the monk asked curtly.

"We'd rather burn ourselves there," said Bertha reasonably, as she got into Kryp's idea. "And we need a big fire."

"Well... then... BURN!!!" the Priest roared like an atomic train siren.

And they burn.

A long tongue of bright yellow flame swept over our heads as Crybaby cranked the spray to full blast and pulled the trigger nonstop. The whirring of the mechanized suspension was lost against the almost animal roar with which the fire burst from the nozzle. As it hit the wet walls, the holy promethium hissed loudly, evaporating moisture and slippery mold. A moment later, the Sinner joined the Crybaby, and the two-barreled squad attempted to light the whole city on fire. Or part of it, hidden in a mysterious 'pocket'.

The ghostly shadow lunged at the squad, barely touching the pavement with its feet as if the otherworldly creature weighted a feather. The creature made a strange hissing sound, but perhaps it was the humming sound of hot steam refracting between the walls. Olga was deafened again by the thunder of the Luct shotgun, and the charge turned the attacker into a jagged blotch, like a drop of ink in a glass of water. The 'blob' hung in the smoky air for a few moments, then melted into nothingness. It was replaced by more and more.

"Ring! The ring of fire!" Bertha screamed. The flamethrowers roared, spewing flames.

Olga did not look around, did not look up, and was afraid to look down, under her feet. She stared into the window of the pressure gauge on the cylinder behind Crybaby's back, shuddering at the shots from Luke's shotgun, which struck her ears with the evenness of a metronome and the force of a sledgehammer. Servitor, like a real combat robot, sprayed one by one the creatures that tried to break up the squad's formation. Very quickly the turret-shaped shotgunner was joined by Demetrius and Crip, who got a Mauser-like long-barreled pistol from somewhere. The good thing was that the gray ghosts would dissolve with just one bullet, so Demetrius put the submachine gun into single-shot mode and handled the weapon surprisingly deftly. The enemies, however, were not ending. They were pouring into the street from windows and alleys as if the cursed place itself were relentlessly generating them.

Almost everyone except the flamethrowers, the Priest, and Olga had some other pistols, so the team shot back vigorously. The balloonist had already partially lost her hearing and paid no attention to the servitor's shots. The black arrow on the white dial of the pressure gauge was creeping toward the end of the scale, marked by a strip of scarlet.

"Where's the acid?!" Bertha yelled. Her voice was so high-pitched that even Olga, who was half deaf, sat down, wrinkling painfully.

"It won't help!" The monk yelled, straining at his torn throat. "We'll die from the fumes! The masks are all gone!"

The Mentor growled unintelligibly as she reloaded the combi-shotgun. Bertha had just kept her respirator.

"Execute!" the Mentor promised. "Every other one! Loss of government property, violation of regulations and Statutes! I'll burn them in front of the ranks, you bastards!"

"The threat multiplies," the servitor repeated monotonously. "The threat is multiplying, it can't be counted."

Another shadow hovered in a long, slow leap, aiming again somewhere in the middle of the group. Crip took down his adversary with one shot and blew the blob apart with a second bullet, just in case, before the ghostly jets descended on Crybaby's head. Smoke and fire kept increasing, so the enemies couldn't break through the curtain of fire, and so they changed tactics. Now they attacked from the upper floors and rooftops, planning like flying squirrels.

"More fire! More!" Bertha commanded, and in her voice, perhaps for the first time, there was a note of underlying fear and hopelessness.

Walls, rusty car wrecks, benches that had fallen into themselves, caught fire badly - a lot of water, a lot of molds. But the infernal mixture of promethium and reagents stuck to everything like syrup, first the fire evaporated the water, and then cheerfully devoured the dried fuel. Even the peeling paint caught fire, spewing streams of black smoke and flakes of soot. Gray-white clouds of steam rose to the dead, motionless sky. It must have been beautiful from the outside-the brightest torch, shimmering red and yellow and orange, the only spot of light in the eternal twilight. The hot flames seemed to be beating the sullen gloom to death, and the desperate battle was at an unsteady point of equilibrium where neither side could prevail.

The arrow on the pressure gauge hit the limiter pin, and Crybaby's flamethrower hissed and emitted a couple of drops of flame retardant for good measure. All that was left was the bluish glow of the ignition torch. Olga only now thought that it would be better to remove the spare cylinder in advance, and her hands were already performing a memorized and repeatedly practiced sequence of actions. Open the spring locks-holders in the machine behind the flamethrower's back, yank the empty cylinder, allowing gravity to drop it. In time to get her foot out from under the heavy metal. Then the bearer got tangled up in the harness and couldn't move the spare tank quickly from behind her back.

Everyone seemed to be yelling, and personally at her. If the girl had had a pair of spare hands, she would have clamped her ears shut, because the savage screams penetrated even through the absorbent cotton of partial deafness. But as it was, Olga only clenched her teeth and twisted inhumanly, tearing either the tarpaulin straps or the overalls, or her skin and all together. At any rate, there was a crunch and a stab of pain under her ribs, closer to her back, as if some ligament had been torn. A stuck 'cradle' with a cylinder, which looked like a frame backpack, moved to my shoulder, and then broke off completely. It turned out that the carrier had broken not a rib, but a clasp that looked like a fastener.

Olga lifted the bulky cylinder with the flammability badge in her arms so easily, as if she were carrying not nearly thirty kilograms, but a light cushion. Slide it in, secure it with the hook, click the locks. Crybaby stood all the while, crouching a little for the comfort of her short helper. And was silent, perhaps the only one in the squad. Either he believed in Olga, or on the contrary, did not expect anything from her. The girl felt herself in tears - it was very, very scary, and the acrid smoke burned her unprotected eyes.

Connect the hose, turn the coupling five turns, no more and no less, or the connection will be loose or the worn thread will break. Fuel can go out, leaking in droplets before the first spark. And there were enough sparks. The squad surrounded itself in a ring of fire, becoming the center of a man-made fire. It was getting hard to breathe, even harder than before, to be exact. The dead air tasted like lead and settled in my lungs, like volcanic ash, cementing the alveoli.

"Fire! Fire!"

Someone yelled in a deaf ear and seemed to be punching the girl on the shoulder. Olga bit her lip until it bled and lost count of how many clutches turns there were. According to the instructions in such cases, it was required to immediately unscrew everything to zero and repeat according to the instructions, strictly on five, regardless of the circumstances and conditions. Because the explosion of the cylinder could easily kill everyone. Olga bit her lip even harder and decided that the Emperor was with her, and if not, let the team have some luck. And she did not change anything.

A valve hissed, a whistle, fortunately far from the piercing sound of a loose connection. The arrow on the machine gauge behind Plaksa's back jerked to the beginning of the yellow bar.

"Done!" In turn, the loader shrieked and slammed her fist into the flamethrower's shoulder. Crybaby squeezed the trigger, and the girl wiped an equally dirty, soot-covered face with the sleeve of her overalls. Waves of heat streamed in from everywhere except, perhaps, the gloomy sky. It was about time the troopers burned before they could get the 'pocket' to spit out the loot.

Let them execute, thought the girl with weary hopelessness, and took off her helmet, cocking her head to catch at least a drop of coolness or the shadow of a draught.

The Emperor's grace must have been with Olga because Demetrius shot another shadow before it swooped down on the humans. But most likely, the God of Mankind judged that the little handler was still laden with considerable sins, so He measured His mercy rather sparingly. A 'drop' that had almost dissolved at the last moment of existence touched Olga's face at the moment when she took off her helmet and raised her face upward.

At first, nothing happened, and then, as if a red-hot needle had been poked into her pupil. And Olga was instantly blind in her right eye. She shrieked shrilly and, grabbing her face, rushed out without knowing where. To get away from the utter terror around her and the terrifying pain that ricocheted around the back of her skull and into the back of her head. The servitor did not fail here either. At the second step, he caught the girl and hit her in the back of the head with the barrel of his shotgun, then literally tossed her flaccid body into Demetrius' arms.

"Closer ranks, friends," the Priest said almost calmly. He raised the barrel of the chemical cannon vertically and turned the regulator wheel with his thumb. "This is going to hurt. But it will be over quickly."

The monk was clearly going to cover all his colleagues with an acid fountain. The Savlar wailed hopelessly, cooler and more bitter than Crybaby, squelching his nosehole. Sinner lowered his empty flamethrower and folded his arms across his chest, head bowed, clearly awaiting a glorious doom. Olga moaned in unconsciousness, beating like a caught sparrow in Demetrius' arms, who poured the contents of some medical bottle into her eye socket.

"It's working!" Kryp screamed. "Look, it's working!!!"

Around here, there was really... something going on. The city had looked like a set, built specifically for some mystical act, inanimate from the start, empty. Now it looked as if some force had drained the life and dull colors from the houses and streets around it. The three-dimensional picture had become flat, and it seemed that it was enough to take a couple of steps to get out of the frame, leaving the squalid image. To top it all off, the walls trembled.

"His Grace is with us," the Priest wheezed, lowering the sprayer. The black chainmail creaked loudly with every movement.

Grace or no grace, the 'pocket town' faltered, like a disturbing image on bad television. Bertha, holding the shotgun with one hand, stretched out the other and looked at the fingers peeking through the gaps in the torn glove. The jumpsuit had turned from yellow-green to brown, covered in soot and dirt. The fingers ached from the cuts, and blood droplets stained thickly on the rubberized leather of the gloves. But the hand was tangible, real, unlike the asphalt and sidewalk that served as its backdrop.

Mentor clenched and unclenched her fist, feeling the pain of a torn fingernail. The grating of the spillway, on which Bertha stepped with her mighty boot - trembled, vibrating and blurring into a single gray smear. The sounds of the long-dead neighborhood faded, disintegrating into individual notes, which in turn faded like sparks in the darkness. Another shadow lunged at Savlar and passed through the convict without consequence. The noseless man shrieked in fear and was silent almost immediately, realizing that he was alive and in moderate health.

"It worked," someone whispered almost reverently. "It worked..."

In the statement lurked the question - had it really worked? Would the change that had begun not spill over to the guests who had uninvited them into a folded part of the world that had kept the frozen past frozen for God knows how many centuries? But then creation itself answered the fearful plea.

The 'pocket' did indeed collapse. Very quickly, very rapidly, on a large scale - the edges of the visible world wrapped up against the starless sky like a tablecloth being removed from a holiday table with all its contents. A few moments and the city curled into a sphere, like a planet turned inside out, with life on the inside. A few more seconds and the sphere began to shrink toward the center, where a scarlet dot erupted, literally burning through the retina. It was completely silent, so the grandiose effect seemed chamber-like, completely unimpressive, not even scary.

Bertha inhaled...

... and exhaled a cloud of steam into the snowflakes dancing in front of her nose.

A jubilant shriek burst into my ears. First, a one-voice shriek - the Savlarr cried out over emotion and general happiness - and then a chorus, as the others became more aware of what had happened.

"Saved, saved, saved," the Holy Man repeated monotonously, kneeling, raking the freshly fallen and dry snow.

Crybaby clicked the lock slowly, tiredly, and let the flamethrower itself fall. The useless weapon slammed its metal against the frozen ground, hard as a rock. Though no... not the ground. Solid ice. The company seemed to be in an endless field of ice, jagged, with humps of hummocks and crevasses of cracks.

Luct nonchalantly cracked his shotgun and loaded the only barrel with the last round. Then reported:

"Threats are not observed. Negative temperature. Negative temperature. Negative..."

Kryp did the odd thing; he walked over to the half-dead servant and leaned his forehead against the servitor's shoulder for a moment, clapping Luke on the back. The gesture would have been appropriate as a token of gratitude to an alive companion, but it seemed silly in the case of a half-robot. But Bertha found it touching and fitting in its own way. Without the iron-head and his precise firing, they probably wouldn't have died in full, but they would surely have lost someone.

"Communication," the Mentor, as usual, went back to her pressing concerns before anyone else.

"Yes, I am," replied the radio operator, rising from his knees and rubbing his frozen hands together.

"Is it as you expected?" the monk asked Kryp. The inquisitor was torn between the call of duty and concern for the fate of Olga, whom Demetrius was dealing with.

"Well... Not really," Fidus admitted honestly. "I was expecting it to collapse with us. And then..." he looked around.

The scenery was dreary and joyful. Dreary, for it was a typical picture of the Ice Beacon. It looked like the company had been thrown out in the middle of a frozen ocean, on an ice shell that hid a dark abyss up to fifteen kilometers deep. Joyful for the same reason.

"It's a kind of miracle," Kryp shook his head with a look of endless surprise on his face. "It's like we're not just strangers, but total strangers."

The young inquisitor twiddled his thumbs as if he couldn't find the right words.

"So 'poisonous' that... that this... 'pocket' didn't grind us into mush, but threw us through itself?" The Priest suddenly came to the rescue, and Fidus nodded appreciatively.

"Yeah, that's about right. And I don't understand how it could have happened. What could have made us so..."

He was silent and threw a quick glance at Olga, but immediately turned away, as if he wanted to hide his outburst of interest.

"No, I don't understand," the inquisitor finished his thought firmly.

"Well, well," the Priest said profoundly, clapped his mighty hands together, and jumped up, warming to the movement. The minister now looked like a

dwarf - broad, stocky, and obviously flightless.

"What about communications!" He asked the Holy Man.

"I do, I do," muttered the radio operator. "Everybody's in a rush, everybody's in a hurry... And how to give it properly, if there's no tracking, no triangulation..."

After a bit of fiddling with the transmitter, the Holy One lifted his head and reported:

"We're at the Beacon. But it looks like we're on the other side of the planet. We don't have enough range. If a satellite passes over us if it picks up our beacon signal..."

"I see," Bertha smiled with the sour expression of someone who'd filled her mouth with vitamin pills. "We have nothing to burn, so we have to dig ourselves in. The snow is a good insulator. We'll make a group and warm ourselves like polar Grocs with shared warmth. If the wind doesn't increase, we'll last about twenty hours."

"How is she," asked Fidus quietly.

"The eye seems to be gone," Demetrius said just as softly. "Completely dead flesh."

"The touch of another side," the inquisitor said with restrained pain in his voice.

"Yes. Lucky."

Olga was still faint, lucky for her. The pain from the single touch of the transcendent entity was such that it pierced even her clouded consciousness.

And the painkillers in Demetrius's medicine cabinet were very nominal. The skinny girl moaned and convulsed.

"Let me hold her back..." Fidus suggested.

"Yes, I'm going to give her a double dose of tranquilizer," the orderly continued.

"What about the heart?" The inquisitor questioned, taking Olga's hands gently, with great care, but firmly.

"It might not endure," Demetrius squinted, trying not to drop the ampoule with his frozen fingers. He couldn't work with gloves on, so he had to take them off. "But it's still better than..."

He didn't finish, and Fidus just nodded silently in agreement.

"Pull up the sleeve," Demetrius tore open the sealed bag of alcohol wipes with his teeth. His frozen lips moved with difficulty, his words muffled and slurred.

The sky was already gloomy, but the storm front stood out against it as a coal-black streak and promised a storm within just a couple of hours. In such weather, no one would even take the planes up to search, and the machines that had already taken off would be turned back. A strong wind multiplies the cold by one and a half, and no one would make it to dawn. Then the wind and ice crumbs will sweep the dead to the bone, abandoned as a monument to human failures, which no one can find anyway.

Luct silently and measuredly fumbled with the metal butt of his shotgun. The Wretch and the Sinner stacked the rubble into something like a low wall on either side of the big snowdrift so that it would provide some sort of shield against the brutal wind.

The Savlar, scooping snow with his helmet, lamented another mournful song about the hard fate of an honest prisoner, who will first endure the guards, then be cremated. Mother would receive an envelope with ashes, a glazed finger, and a lower jaw (for identification and fingerprint confirmation), after which, of course, the old lady's heart would burst with grief. The noseless freak took advantage of everyone's fatigue and whimpered without fear of a beating. The anti-wind protection was worthless, the snow was dry and not sticky, but crumbled like glass chips. But better than nothing, maybe a few more hours of life.

Luct finally broke the buttstock, even the steel frame failed and cracked at the weld. The Sinner silently handed the servitor a small hatchet converted from a Guardsman's hatchet. The blood that slowly oozed from his pierced lips dried, mingled with the dirt, then froze and turned his face into a horrifying mask. Demetrius wanted to help, but the Sinner refused the bandage, shaking his head silently.

A cold wind peppered the handfuls of snowflakes that looked more like razor-edged ice crystals. The crew built shelter with the tenacity of doomed men clutching at the last straw. Until the moment when the silhouette of a winged machine flashed in the thundering twilight and the searchlight beam scrambled blindly, targeting the small group of men who had gone to hell and come back.

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