Page 8 of Under the Iron Sky

“The shift rotation just took place.” Soraya palmed her gun. “Get the charges ready and wait for my signal. We’re heading in now.”

The tunnel leading to the nest was black as pitch. Had it not been for the scanners on their bracers, they wouldn’t have been able to see a thing.

Soraya had almost vomited the first time she’d done this. She could cope with the sudden dip in temperature, a sign of lingering magic they’d learned in the early months of the war. The total blackness didn’t really bother her anymore either.

It was the silence she couldn’t stand. The stark nothingness that seemed to swallow all air and sound from the tunnel so completely she kept pressing her fingers against her throat to make sure there was still a pulse there.

Noah was doing surprisingly well. He’d needed a little push to take that first step, but he was much calmer than Soraya had expected. He was such a brave boy. She would make sure everyone back at the base knew it when they returned.

This queen had made a mess of the rail network. Before the invasion, all the major cities of Vordell had been connected by the Golden Rail, a large circular monorail track that wove around the entire planet in a shimmering circle. It was one of the first things the enemy destroyed when they surfaced.

They were in the southeast station, where travelers used to be able to take smaller connecting carriages to either the fishing port of Enzure, or through the thick woodland of the Hennon Forest.

According to their information, the queen had made her nest in the station’s largest platform, meaning that she’d had to go through the Junction, a highway of golden metal tracks built upon massive gears and springs that moved and rearranged themselves when an approaching train needed to change direction. She must’ve been on the larger side then, given that she’d ripped it all to shreds when burrowing through it rather than ducking between and around the tracks like her sisters had when making their nests.

Soraya kept her eyes on her forearm, doing her best to watch only the scanner for signs they weren’t alone, and ignore the holographic outlines of skeletal remains on the floor.

She’d completed harder missions. This one would be no different—especially now there were only three Dar’rak guarding the nest.

Ugh. Even thinking the name tinted the corners of Soraya’s vision red. While the Dar’rak was what they’d proclaimed their name to be, they’d been given so many others since the invasion. Some said they were Gods from the old world because of their magic, and others said they were demons straight out of hell. Soraya didn’t really care what they were called. Their blood would end up on her gun or knuckle-dusters either way.

As they walked, her mind drifted back to the first Dar’rak she’d ever faced off against. That child on the rooftop. He’d been a runt compared to the ones that’d followed. She tried not to think about how many people she’d seen crushed or torn apart with a wave of a hand. She’d never sleep again if she did.

Was he still alive? She hadn’t seen his face that day, but she sometimes wondered if their paths had crossed since; how many times they’d tried to kill each other across battlefields; if they’d ever come close to ending each other.

Just as their information said, they found the nest in what remained of the central platform. Chairs and broken tables from a lifetime ago still littered the floor beside bones and torn clothes—likely remains of the queen’s latest meals. Thick grime coated every surface, weeds poked up from cracks in the once shiny marble floor, and almost all of the glass in the four walls and ceiling was shattered, leaving this place completely open to the elements.

Just like the rest of the world now, the platform was incredibly dark. The fires flickering atop black metal torches that’d been nailed into the floor were dim at best, but lit the giant room just enough for Soraya to see the three Dar’rak sitting by what used to be the ticket desk, dressed in spiked black armor with horrific iron helmets covering their faces, gathered around a small table with a dice and board atop it.

And behind them … Burning fucking suns. This was the biggest nest Soraya had ever seen.

The queen had pulled all the carriages from their tracks to barricade her nest, positioning them in a large circle around the piles of eggs as though they were branches she’d plucked from a tree. There had to be three, maybe four hundred eggs stacked atop one another in five adjacent piles, each harboring a beast that could grow to a horse-sized killing machine in a matter of days.

This queen was at least three times larger than any of her children could hope to grow. She slept atop the largest pile, her spiked tail almost lovingly caressing the eggs at the bottom of her clutch. Her scales were the same inky black as every other stalker, her claws just as sharp. The only real difference between her and her young was the mask-like exoskeleton covering her snout and head, thicker than any Vordellian-made metal, ending in deer-like antlers to form a crown splaying over the top of her skull.

Noah started to tremble. Soraya barely managed to keep herself from doing the same at the sight of those antlers, at the torn human limbs dangling from them, then the ones on the floor.

Vander hadn’t exactly been lying. The queens did make their nests on Vordellian territory to be closer to their food source—humans—and while they did have a horrible habit of laying bodies around their eggs to ensure their spawns’ monstrous appetites were sated as soon as they gnawed their way into this world, they rarely used children—not enough meat, presumably.

Soraya drew a deep breath through her nose and focused on the weapons strapped to her body. The sunrifle on her back. The guns holstered on each thigh. The ring of bombs against her belt and as many knives on her arms and waist as she could comfortably bear the weight of.

She could do this. She had everything she needed to complete this mission and then some.

Everything was going to be fine.

Stepping onto Soraya’s waiting palms, Noah silently hoisted himself onto the roof of one of the discarded trains farthest from the nest. He laid on his stomach, positioning his sunrifle by his side, and placed his face against the eye scope. When he motioned with a thumbs-up that he had a good view of the nest, Soraya reopened the communication line with the rest of the team.

“Alpha in position,” she whispered. “Make your move.”

The ground trembled, first from the north, then the south, then the west, finishing in the east.

The queen rose with a screech loud enough to wake the dead. She slunk onto her hind legs, snapping her fangs at the Dar’rak on the ground, who were all very quick about picking up their weapons and sprinting into the tunnels to investigate the explosions.

Soraya wasted no time. Keeping as close to the ground as she could, she moved quickly but silently over and through the discarded carriages and into the inner nest. She armed the first bomb with a few well-practised twists, and had just left it at the base of the closest stack of eggs when the queen crawled onto the platform and began inspecting the clutches.

Heart beginning to pound in her throat, Soraya made sure to keep several feet and trains between them so the queen couldn’t pick up her scent, and carried on with the mission. She laid a bomb against the second clutch, then the third. The queen did get a little too close for comfort when she armed the fourth, but Soraya managed to keep hidden in one of the carriages until the creature moved on.

As much as she tried to quash it, hope started to bubble in Soraya’s chest as she moved toward the final stack. Just one more bomb and they could get out of here. They’d almost done it.