Raining Fire Read online

  ALSO BY RAJAN KHANNA

  Falling Sky

  Rising Tide

  Published 2017 by Pyr®, an imprint of Prometheus Books

  Raining Fire. Copyright © 2017 by Rajan Khanna. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, organizations, products, locales, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Cover illustration © Chris McGrath

  Cover design by Nicole Sommer-Lecht

  Cover design © Prometheus Books

  Inquiries should be addressed to

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Khanna, Rajan, 1974- author.

  Title: Raining fire / by Rajan Khanna.

  Description: Amherst, NY : Pyr, an imprint of Prometheus Books, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017009894 (print) | LCCN 2017013208 (ebook) | ISBN 9781633882744 (ebook) | ISBN 9781633882737 (paperback)

  Subjects: | GSAFD: Science fiction. | Fantasy fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3611.H359 (ebook) | LCC PS3611.H359 R35 2017 (print) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017009894

  Printed in the United States of America

  For those who fight for equality, who stand up for those in need, who don’t tolerate injustice.

  For those who resist.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE AND A THIRD

  CHAPTER ONE

  Hungover.

  Hungover and running.

  Hungover and running and trying not to vomit.

  I race across the ground with Claudia in front of me. She holds her bow; I trail with my father’s revolver. I beg my head to stop pounding, a development that only started when I began to pump my legs.

  This was a bad idea.

  The ground is dangerous. But so is facing the day sober. I was promised alcohol at the end of this. If it wasn’t for that, I would have told Claudia to fuck off.

  (In fact I might have told her to fuck off.)

  Now I’m running toward a warehouse that keeps blurring in and out of focus. Claudia and I move together. By now we know each other well enough to coordinate without words, which is good because I’m a little sick of talking to Claudia. She must be a little sick of talking to me, too, since these days I mostly get sour looks. When she does talk to me, it’s mostly to tell me to put down the bottle.

  I tend to ignore her.

  I cover her, she covers me, and we move, quickly now, up to the warehouse. Metal stairs climb up the side of the building, but they don’t reach the ground. Too easy for Ferals to get up that way. But we stop quickly at the bottom. Me beneath them. Claudia runs forward and leaps, and I boost her up. I grunt as I heft her weight, but her boots sail over my head and I hear a slap as her hands come down around the bottom stair. Sucking in air, she pulls herself up and hooks her legs around the bars. Then she pulls out a harness, with a series of clips and straps and, most importantly, ropes, and secures it to the stairs and drops it down to me.

  I climb the ropes, thinking as I do that I have let myself get out of shape. The dots of perspiration on my forehead are now rivers of sweat. My arms shake as I pull myself up, but I reach the stairs as Claudia nears the top, and I heft myself up to them. The trick now is to go slow so that we don’t make too much of a racket. No telling who or what is in the warehouse.

  Claudia moves to the door on the roof of the warehouse, the one we saw before approaching. It’s locked, of course, but that’s nothing to Claudia. I can get past locks—it’s a skill most foragers need to learn—but Claudia excels at it. The only person I saw better at it was Mal. Using her tools, she has it open in a snap and then we’re moving inside, slowly, cautiously, down some more metal stairs and onto a kind of walkway that looks down at the warehouse. Needless to say, we move as quietly as we can. It helps that we’re not carrying heavy weapons. And that we’re moving slowly. And that there’s noise beneath us.

  I catch sight of a bunch of rectangular structures and a few moving people beneath us. No one seems to be looking up, and there’s no alarm. Good. Let’s hope that continues.

  A moment later I realize that the rectangular structures are cages. My skin prickles. Ferals? Are they Cabal? Or just crazy?

  Then I make out what’s in the cages. People. But they’re still. Unmoving. Huddled into the corners or stretched out on the ground. I don’t see any of them raving or pacing, don’t hear any growls or cries or screams of challenge.

  Humans, then? Prisoners?

  As I watch, a man moves toward one of the cages. At least I think it’s a man. He’s large. Wearing dark clothing and a hood of some sort. He unlocks the cage door as a companion comes into view. This one holds a rifle. The hooded man pulls a man out of the cage. Rifle Man makes sure the gun is trained on him. Hood inspects the man, holding out each of his arms and opening his mouth, then instructs him to drop his pants.

  It hits me what I’m seeing. Where we are. Who all of these people are.

  Slaves. And where there are slaves . . .

  A moment later, I realize that I’ve descended down the stairway and I’m halfway across the walkway. My revolver points forward, gripped tightly in my gloved right hand.

  Slavers.

  I’m vaguely aware of Claudia behind me, trying to catch my attention. She’s waving to me, hissing my name, but it falls away, pushed back by this haze that clings to me.

  I start counting the slavers below. Anyone that isn’t in a cage. I get to six and then lose track. Too many, then, the voice in my head says, but my legs keep moving.

  Two at the bottom of the ramp, near the first cage where the bodies are still. Dead? Or just sleeping?

  Another one roams between the cages, keeping an eye on the slaves.

  Two more stand over a table, looking at some papers. They can read, I note, but it’s a fleeting thought, quickly lost in this persistent pressure behind my eyes.

  I walk toward the first two. They look up as they notice movement, but my gun is already trained on them.

  I fire. Once. Twice. A bullet tears out half of t
he first slaver’s neck and he goes down, clutching at the wound with a hand that quickly turns red. The second bullet hits the other square in the face, turning it into bloody pulp. By now the noise is echoing throughout the room and the other slavers are preparing their weapons, getting ready to fire at the intruder in their midst.

  At me.

  I find I don’t care.

  I round the stairs, and the fluid haze that I’ve been walking through, that misty bubble, suddenly bursts and everything is cold and sharp and real. I see shapes raising weapons and by instinct I duck down behind a table, tipping it to the ground for cover. I catch a glimpse of straps dangling from its surface. Then gunfire erupts all around me. Shots whizz and fly and strike everywhere. The floor. The table. The walls. The cells.

  The cells.

  I think about the slaves inside of them. They’re the slavers’ livelihood, but maybe not valuable enough that they care about the cross fire.

  I lean out from behind the table and hear a bullet rip the air so close to my head that I almost turn around and run.

  But I don’t.

  A dark shape moves toward me, leaping over the table, and slams into me, crushing me down onto the floor.

  I gasp as I lose my breath, and then grunt as the slaver punches me in the face. Then again. As he pulls the arm back for a third time, I slap one hand against the ground and bring the other one, the one holding the revolver, into the side of his face. He tilts and I shift him off, slamming the revolver barrel into his head again. Then again. The coldness that I’ve been feeling starts to fade, boiled off by a burning rage inside of me.

  I’m vaguely aware of the blood that splatters the slaver’s face, which is stippled across the side of my revolver, but I don’t have time for that now.

  I stand and shoot at the slavers across the room. Gunfire sparks and whines through the air.

  I’m driven by one thing only—the urge to send all of these evil monsters to their deaths. The need to.

  One of them, wearing a dark hood and a black scarf across the mouth, goes down with a cry.

  There are still too many of them, though. And I’m pinned down where I am.

  Then they start moving, taking shelter behind the cages, using the slaves’ bodies as shields. Suddenly I can’t shoot. I won’t risk hitting one of those poor bastards.

  The slavers have no such qualms. They reach through the bars and shoot at me, and I’m forced to take cover behind the table again. Bits and pieces of it crack and splinter with every gunshot. I take the time to reload the revolver.

  Two more of the slavers come out from behind their human shields and make a beeline for me, one on either side, trying to flank me. I get off a shot at one, and miss, then the other pins me down. I switch targets to that one, and the other covers him.

  Fuck.

  Closer now. Any second, they’ll both round the table from opposite sides, and I’ll be caught between them. Trapped. The word brings up dark feelings, thoughts. Those feelings fuel this fire burning inside of me. I count to three, then scramble for one side of the table, leaning out to shoot at the man (or woman—I can’t tell) on that side. The first bullet takes him in the thigh, the second somewhere north of there. But I keep going, using the table’s straps to help spin me around to the other side of the table. The man coming around behind me tears up the ground where I was just moments ago. I manage to spring up to my feet and then over the table, crashing into the man and taking us both down to the floor.

  He’s stunned for a moment, and I roll on top of him. Then I jam the barrel of the revolver up against his chin, tilt my head away, shield my face, and fire.

  Brains and blood and bits of skull explode from the top of his head, the splatter flying free.

  I have a moment of triumph. Behind my scarf, a dark, bitter smile takes over my face. Then the chorus of gunfire returns and the table begins to shatter.

  I scramble to one side, toward more gunfire, as holes start appearing in the table’s wooden surface. No escape, then. I close my eyes.

  Then I hear a scream. I spare a look and see an arrow take a man down, neatly hitting him in the face and punching out the back of his head. Another arrow spears another’s slaver’s chest.

  Claudia.

  Part of me sings to see it like always.

  The remaining slavers turn toward this new threat, and I leap over the table and run toward them, the revolver out in front of me.

  Now Claudia and I are both sides of a cruel set of claws, coming together around them.

  One of the slavers turns to Claudia, turns back to me, and I shoot him . . . somewhere. I shoot again. And again. Arrows and bullets fly through the air, and we are alongside the cages so the slaves aren’t in our cross fire. When my revolver clicks empty, I pull my backup automatic and empty that at the slavers.

  Then it’s all done. Just Claudia and I stand, and everyone else is on the ground, either dead (slavers) or scared (slaves).

  “Thanks,” I say to Claudia.

  Her face is tight, flat. “Ben—”

  “We need to get these people out of here,” I say. “All of them.”

  “Of course,” she says. She sounds weary. So incredibly weary.

  “We can put them in the cargo hold.”

  She bends down and starts searching the men. For keys, I realize. I lower myself and do the same. We find keys on a couple of the men and start trying the cage doors.

  “We’re not going to hurt you,” I say. “We’re here to get you out of here.” Never mind that it’s not true, never mind that we came here for completely different reasons. This is where we are now and this is what we’re doing. All of the slaves look tired and scared, but I think I see something like hope in some of their eyes.

  Those that are alive, at least. One of the cages holds three dead bodies, dead before we got here. Another holds a form huddled against the bars on one side. He doesn’t seem shot but I move toward him.

  “He’s been like that for a couple of days,” a woman says.

  “Dead?” I ask, as I search for the key to unlock the door.

  “Almost,” the woman says. She looks a little dirty and underfed. “He . . . he started doing bad just after we got here. A lot worse each day. He’s not going to make it.”

  “Sick?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. No. If he was sick, he would be gone already. No slaver would risk all of his stock by letting disease spread.

  “What then?”

  “Wounded,” the woman says.

  I move toward the man. As I get nearer, the stench hits me. Old blood, but even more, the smell of infection. The man is shivering and pale. His skin is waxy, and perspiration covers his face and neck. His fingers flex, his eyes bulge. There’s a bandage around his midsection that’s stained red around the abdomen. He might be too far gone. He might be. But he might also recover if he gets the right treatment.

  “He looks bad,” Claudia says, coming up next to me.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Maybe we should——”

  “No,” I say, my voice low. “We might be able to save him.”

  “Ben—”

  “We have to drop these people somewhere, don’t we? Maybe we can get someone to help him.”

  “Ben—”

  “I’m not leaving him behind,” I say.

  She meets my eyes. “We don’t have to let him suffer.”

  “Let me try,” I say.

  She inhales, then nods. “Okay.”

  “Start getting the others on the Valkyrie,” I say. “I’ll get one of them to help me with this one.” She does, and I do, finding a man who doesn’t seem too impaired from his captivity and getting him to help me carry the wounded man.

  We get just outside the warehouse doors when he stops shivering. Stops everything.

  “Damn it.”

  The man helping stares at me, asks me what to do with him.

  “He deserves some kind of grave.”

  The man carrying th
e bottom half of the dead body gestures with his head to a field at the side of the warehouse. Curious, I gently lay down the body and go to look.

  I almost wish I hadn’t, when I get there. The field looks recently disturbed. Nearby, white bones stick out from the ground. Probably some kind of mass grave. Better to bury them than leave them to attract Ferals above ground. The bones look picked clean—by the weather or insects or predators or maybe just time.

  I realize what I’m doing is futile. There’s no way to get peace for the dead. Not here. Better to focus on the living. So, leaving the body, I grab my helper and return to the others.

  Claudia is gathering up all of the slaves, getting ready to take them back to the Valkyrie. I guide my man over to the group. “I have an airship,” Claudia says. “I’m going to get it, and then I’m going to take all of you out of here.”

  “What if we don’t want to go?” one woman asks, scratching at her arm.

  “I’m not going to force anyone,” Claudia says. “But I can get you to a trading post. From there you can find your way back to wherever you came from. Or on to someplace else. If you want to go your own way, I won’t stop you, but on foot you’re asking for trouble.”

  “It’s the best deal you’re going to get,” I say. “Might as well take it.”

  “I’m going to get the ship,” Claudia says to me. I nod back.

  Claudia’s going to have to bring the ship to the ground to load all of these people, so I stay with them until they’re ready to move outside.

  As I’m looking around the place, grabbing as many weapons and as much ammo as I can from the slavers (a man has to drink, after all), I hear a groan. I quickly locate the source—one of the slavers isn’t dead. As I bend over him, I pull another of the men’s scarves off and stuff it in his mouth. Then I return to the slaves.

  When the Valkyrie hits the ground, I meet Claudia at the loading ramp and help shepherd the former slaves on board. “Give me a minute,” I say. “I just need to take care of something.”

  Claudia eyes me, skeptical.

  “Just a few minutes,” I say. “You can take the ship up. Just get ready to lower me a ladder.”

  “Don’t take long,” she says at last.