Free Exiles in Arms: Night of the Necrotech by C. L. Werner Page A

raked across, leaving an ugly scrape along the side of the Toro’s head.
    Rex countered with a vicious jab to the Nomad’s waist, trying to strike at the drive shafts controlling its legs. Bruno lurched forward before the blow could land, forcing Rex’s hand to smash higher up on its hull. Sparks flared from the Toro’s fist as steel spikes stabbed into it.
    Rutger screamed at Rex, commanding his ’jack to defend itself. Bruno pounded both its fists into the Toro’s sides. Rex refused to budge, remaining locked beside the armored Nomad. For an instant, Rutger thought his ’jack had suffered cortex damage. Then Rex reeled away from Bruno. Clenched in its hand was one of the spikes, ripped free from the Nomad’s hull. Rex’s frame shuddered as Bruno delivered another savage punch, but the Toro seemed oblivious to the bolt-popping blow. Its optics were focused on Bruno’s right leg. Rex drew its arm back, then threw its full weight into a brutal thrust. The spike stabbed deep into Bruno’s driveshaft, and lubricants and coolants sprayed from ruptured pipes and hoses.
    The Nomad took one step back. Then its damaged leg locked up, seized, and became dead weight. Bruno threw out its arm, steadying itself against the wall.
    “Close in!” Rutger ordered. Up close, Bruno would be unable to bring the full force of its punches to bear. Indeed, the extra weight would prove a crippling hindrance for the warjack. “Strike for the head!”
    Bruno did its best to avoid the blow Rex threw at it, pivoting its torso so the spiny metal mane took the brunt of the strike. Rex pulled back, catching Bruno’s arm as it lashed out, trying to pound the steam engine at the rear of the Toro’s hull. With its other hand, Rex grabbed hold of one of the spikes bolted to Bruno’s collar. The shriek of tortured steel rang out again.
    Two, three, four of the spines were forced backward and in. Rex was turning the protective ring of spikes around Bruno’s head into a cage to blind the Nomad’s optics. Across from him, in the other cage, Rutger could see the other operator in abject panic. Rutger was almost ashamed to admit it, but the Morridane’s distress was an exhilarating sight.
    Rutger returned his attention to the fight below. In a desperate gamble, Bruno lurched away from the wall, clawing at Rex with the arm it had been using to keep itself upright. The Nomad was depending on Rex’s restraining grip to maintain its balance. It was the simplest tactic for Rutger to counter. All he had to do was tell Rex to let go.
    Before he could give the order, Rutger’s cage jostled violently and leapt upward in the air. He was thrown to the bottom of the cage as it came hurtling downward again and the restraining cable caught up the sudden slack.
    Rutger’s ears were ringing from the echoes of a tremendous explosion. Plumes of dust and smoke rose into the air. Following them, he saw a great jagged rent in the outer wall of the arena.
    Shouts of confusion and alarm turned into screams as a horrifying shape scurried through the fissure in the Scrapyard’s wall. It was a ghoulish, grisly fusion of advanced mechanika and blackest magic, an evil amalgam of the arcane and the profane. A stocky metal hull within blazed the ghoulish glow of balefire. Large, thick fangs reinforced a skeletal maw of exposed bone. Clawed talons of bone and steel propelled the ravenous horror across the floor.
    The jaded audiences of the Scrapyard had seen many savage spectacles, but none had prepared them for the thing that set upon a dazed attendant and bit him in half with one snap of its necrotic jaws. The arena became a pandemonium of fear as the mob descended into chaos.
    The grisly Deathripper leaped from its first victim to drag down a second, indifferent to the panic raging around it. The murderous essence inside the bonejack was aware only of the irritating life energies shining around it—annoyances it was built to extinguish.

CHAPTER IV
    B edlam reigned