Page 5

“Five seconds to breach.”

The hull of the corvette rips open as Colloway sends a miracle shot home. His warhead sprays out molecular crash webbing.

Two seconds.

One.

Breach.

I pierce the molten hole. The black blur of the molecular crash webbing expands like glossy, replicating fungus.

I smash into the webbing. My teeth bite through my mouthguard. My internal organs throb. The webbing absorbed my crash, but quickly becomes a liability, as Alexandar warned. It seals the breach and traps me upside down in its embrace. I can’t reach the dispersal agent on my pulseArmor’s thigh.

As the webbing expands, I see only blackness. Masked enemies in tattered desert gear crawl through it. A moment before, the Gorgons were being pushed out the breach into space. Now they are as trapped as I am. I can’t reach the razor on my wrist. Not half a meter away, a sunburnt Obsidian with chromed-out desert eyes points a pistol at my head. I push the barrel away and, slowed by the webbing, thrust my left hand into his stomach until the flesh gives. He screams as I reach under his ribcage and squeeze his liver.

“Sound off,” I bark.

“Howler Three,” Thraxa says. “Enemy contact, releasing counter-agent.”

“Pup Two. Landfall,” Rhonna says. “Drilling on your go.”

“Pup One? Tongueless?” Only static replies.

The crash webbing bubbles. Thraxa’s released the counter-agent. It dissolves into a black soup that hisses against the deck. Sheets of steam roll up. Released, my armor clunks to the floor, my hand still inside the screaming slaveknight. I pull out my razor and bury it in his face.

Others move in the steam as he twitches. Six enemies, all coming for me. I struggle to stand. Then, one by one, the six shapes divide into twelve. A lean figure glides through them all like a Lykos dancer.

“Pup One, reporting.”

Alexandar, fresh from bisecting a half-dozen of the Fear Knight’s best men, slams to a knee in front of me. He wipes the blood from his family blade and helps me to my feet.

The hole Colloway shot in the ship goes three decks deep. Sparks from broken instruments crackle. Molecular armor on the hull clatters as it seals the breach behind us, locking us in.

Tongueless clicks over the com and appears from two decks below. He boosts up and assembles the ripWing cannon he and Rhonna harvested from the graveyard, hooking the man-sized gun to his armor’s homemade exoskeleton. Thraxa pulls herself from a mangled wall. Her fox warhelm is dented. A sharp piece of metal sticks through her lower guts and out the back of her armor. She bends the points of the metal shard down and looks toward the sound of enemies coming up from the lower decks and down the main corridor.

I toss a grenade down to the lower decks. White light flares and a concussion thunders. I peek out into the main corridor.

Masked men in tactical gear move like a hunched organism down the hall. I dip my head back just as bullets chew into the wall and it starts to melt.

“Tongueless, give ’em a lick.”

Tongueless levers the ripWing cannon forward on its hydraulic arm while Thraxa braces him from behind. The cannon is meant for ships. Not men. It screams toroids of energy down the hall, bucking the Obsidian into Thraxa. The frame rate of the world stutters. Behind Tongueless, Thraxa pulls her warhammer from its magnetic holster. Alexandar salutes me with his blade and turns to the main corridor.

Kaleidoscopic carnage unfolds before us.

“Pup Two, go for drill,” I say to Rhonna.

“Copy.”

“Invert,” I order. All except Tongueless rotate boots to ceiling. “One hundred meters to the Package. Push.”

We charge into the wake of Tongueless’s maelstrom. Everything is upside down. The very air ripples with heat. Body parts steam all over the floor. Half-melted doorways tilt. The main corridor runs the spine of the ship. It is the most direct route to the prison cells. But it means we will be flanked in seconds. We must punch through, or it’s all on Rhonna.

There’s a blur at the far end of the corridor. Drones scream for us, spitting munitions. Three of us open up with our pulseFists. Shrapnel pings everywhere. Then the Gorgons come to p

lay.

Dozens of elite guerrillas fire around corners, but we roll down the ceiling like an upside-down wrecking ball made of energy, razors, and hammers.