Nova War

One against five – or six, if you included the maul-worm.

'You're right,' Bourdain said. 'I'm a fugitive. So let Honeydew here arrest me.'

'So your friends in Immortal Light can help you disappear? I don't think so. This way we keep it public and in the open. It's obvious to half of Darkwater there's a major security operation taking place up here. And besides, my Queen desires answers. Answers that I intend to find for her.'

'All right, I understand,' Bourdain replied, a wheedling tone in his voice. 'Moss, put your knife away. Rachel, Toby, I want you to put your guns down on the table. Remembrance here is going to place us under arrest. I-'

Bourdain's gaze flicked past Remembrance and towards Moss with an expression of alarm. Remembrance turned just in time to see Moss slashing towards him with the blade. Remembrance hit the ground and rolled, his shotgun coming free at the same time, but not before he felt the blade slice across the flesh that separated his upper set of wings.

He chittered in pain and felt his finger tighten around the trigger, sending two bullets up into the roof of the maul-worm's gullet.

The maul-worm screamed.

The sound began far away as a raw and breathy escalation that soon erupted into a hurricane of rotten-meat stench from the deepest recesses of the monster's i

Remembrance glimpsed Moss's knife where it had slipped between two of the slats, its blade still active and vibrating, slowly sinking out of sight as it dug a deep raw wound in the floor of the maul-worm's gullet, sending chunks of meat and blood spitting upwards in the process. He looked around wildly, but there was no sign of Moss. He was gone.

He'd seen the look on Bourdain's face when Moss had slashed him. That hadn't been part of their plan; Remembrance felt sure of it. For some reason, Moss had wanted him to pull the trigger. He felt sure of it.

As for Bourdain and the two bodyguards, they were desperately trying to pick their way through the wreckage of the platform, which had shattered beneath them. Honey dew had already taken flight, flapping upwards and slaloming erratically from side to side as he tried to work out which way the exit lay. What little light there was now flickered and danced wildly as the few surviving glow-globes rolled and bounced across the floor of the cave.

Remembrance reached down and retrieved Moss's vibrating knife before it sank completely out of sight. He re-sheathed his shotgun onto his harness and himself took flight, pushing upwards despite the thi

The ceiling dropped suddenly and Remembrance swooped lower in his panicked flight, grabbing hold of one of the metal poles that dotted the maul-worm's interior. He saw Tobias Mazower stumble and fall as the maul-worm's gullet rippled crazily under him. The man started crawling towards the exit, just as another long tentacle shot down, snagging the bodyguard around the ankle. It began pulling him upwards and he screamed as it tugged at him, but after a moment the tentacle released him.

Mazower scrambled away in terror, but Remembrance could see that the bodyguard had become disoriented by the flickering shadows, and was moving away from the exit rather than towards it. The interior of the restaurant was becoming noticeably narrower as the worm's body began constricting.

As Remembrance watched, another wave of peristaltic motion – much more violent this time – rolled out of the darkness and flipped Mazower upwards and backwards, before carrying him out of sight, and deep into those moist, inky depths…

A shot whined past Remembrance's head, almost catching him in one wing. He glided over to another pole and saw Bourdain taking unsteady aim as he and Rachel Kapur tried to fight their way on towards the monster's mouth. Then the floor of the maul-worm's gullet rose up beneath him, and he almost lost his grip on his gun.

There was no sign of Honey dew, so Remembrance felt sure the traitorous security chief had already made his escape. The floor of the restaurant now looked more like a turbulent sea than anything else, waves of shuddering motion cascading through the monster's body that nothing could possibly stand upright on.

Remembrance took flight once more, sailing over Bourdain's head, his wings brushing against first one side and then the other of the cave. The monster's mouth was begi

He slammed into a cave wall just outside and looked back, glimpsing Bourdain and Kapur, wide-eyed disbelief on both their faces as the maul-worm's lips finally clamped shut right before them with a final breathy exhalation.

He stared in disgust as the maul-worm's body suddenly peeled itself away from the walls of the cave that had sheltered it for centuries, transforming into a giant, pale tube of writhing flesh that wriggled backwards into the depths of the mountain, its body scraping noisily against the surrounding rock as it went.

You still have Honeydew to deal with, Remembrance reminded himself.

Right now, staying alive was still his number-one priority. Somewhere out there, beyond the mouth of the cave, there was an entire world of enemies, citizens of a rival Hive that he suspected had just developed an overwhelming desire to see him dead. Fortunately he still had Moss's knife firmly gripped in one hand, with his shotgun and pistol secure on his harness within easy reach.

He took a moment to think and to assess the damage so far. He didn't know how bad the wound on his back was but, since he'd managed to fly his way out of the maul-worm, it probably wasn't much more than a flesh-wound. Sheer terror had overwhelmed any pain he might have felt. There were biomonitors built into his harness, but all they told him was what he already knew, that he'd lost some blood and was suffering from severe stress.

Unfortunately, however, he was still losing blood. Every time he reached behind him and between his wings, his hand came away wet and slick, and he didn't have any medical patches handy.

However, the current state of peaceful detente between the two Hives meant that his own Hive of Darkening Skies was allowed to maintain a small, albeit token, military force on Ironbloom. Remembrance activated a harness-mounted emergency beacon that would help them locate him – and, given what he now knew, certainly bring that state of happy detente to a rapid end.

Remembrance peered out from the gloom and saw that the batteries of defensive weapons were now pointing towards the mouth of the cave, rather than away from it. The Darkwater war-dirigible that had brought him to the mountain was now floating barely a few metres above the ledge that lay immediately beyond the cave mouth, a looming silhouette with the bright lights of the city's highest towers reflected on the polished under-surface of its gondola.

My Queen of Darkening Skies. I am ever your faithful servant, but this unworthy one prays for some very heavily armed back-up, and soon.

Remembrance heard just the faintest shout as he peered out from the cave, and a moment later the ground right in front of him exploded, blasting a crater out of the smooth rock. He cried out and stumbled backwards, falling over sharp-edged rocks deeper within the cave entrance as a rain of gravel came pouring down. Pain lanced through his back, between his wings, just as he heard a loud rumbling from deeper inside the cave…