Rajan Khanna - Raining fire

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 authors imagination or are used fictitiously.

Cover illustration Chris McGrath
Cover design by Nicole Sommer-Lecht
Cover design Prometheus Books

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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/.6dc23

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 dont tolerate injustice.

For those who resist.

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 fathers 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 wasnt for that, I would have told Claudia to fuck off.

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

Now Im 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 Im 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, its 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 dont 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 dont 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. Its locked, of course, but thats nothing to Claudia. I can get past locksits a skill most foragers need to learnbut 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 were 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 were not carrying heavy weapons. And that were moving slowly. And that theres 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 theres no alarm. Good. Lets 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 whats in the cages. People. But theyre still. Unmoving. Huddled into the corners or stretched out on the ground. I dont see any of them raving or pacing, dont 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 its a man. Hes 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 Im seeing. Where we are. Who all of these people are.

Slaves. And where there are slaves...

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

Slavers.

Im vaguely aware of Claudia behind me, trying to catch my attention. Shes 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 isnt 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 its 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 the first slavers 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 dont care.

I round the stairs, and the fluid haze that Ive 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. Theyre 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 dont.

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