Seven near-perfect shots slam into Atlas’s shield, wreathing him in a cocoon of blue and green fire. Atlas keeps the shield up even though his skin must be boiling inside it.
Rhone saves Atlas’s life by firing at Cassius’s sniper position with his pistol as he draws his rifle with his off-hand. He switches between the weapons like water flows to lower ground. His dragon helmet slithers up for combat.
“Kill clearance?” Rhone yells.
“Granted,” Atlas calls. “Switch.”
His shield cooling from the reprieve Rhone granted him, Atlas springs after Cassius.
Rhone shifts back to firing at me, this time with ammunition that will shred my scarabSkin. I rush my former Dux from behind my aegis and leap, leaving the crown of my head exposed as bait before shifting my aegis. He snaps two shots at my head. The aegis takes the rifle-fire at point-blank range. But he switches ammunition on the gun and fires a trick shot on the ground that bounces up under the shield and whizzes between my legs.
Rhone switches ammunition again, and a slow-moving slug pounds the left rim of my aegis. Still in the air, I’m spun around in a full revolution, coming out of it just in time to fall back toward him and plunge my razor through his pulseShield, through his armor, to take him in his bent right leg, midway up the thigh. Before I can withdraw it, Rhone deploys a buffer pulse from his armor. I’m smacked by an invisible, giant hand, stunning me and sending me sprawling backward.
I lose hold of my razor but not my aegis. I fend off a hail of gunfire and roll to my feet, dazed, to find Rhone with his leg still impaled by my razor. Instead of dropping his rifle to remove its tip from the floor, he pulls sideways against the blade, taking it through the meat of his thigh. Blood sprays from the wound and vaporizes against his pulseShield.
Crimson fog fills the space between his armor and the shield, obscuring his sight. He becomes a bloody shadow as he fires at me. I duck behind my aegis and take three more shots meant for my head. I try to close again, and launch myself toward my razor—still sticking upright in the deck. Grasping it on the roll, I come up and drive the blade toward his head. He deflects that strike and two more with his rifle.
The deflections must cost him his rifle because he shocks me by closing within my guard. No Gray ever tries to close on a Gold. It’s suicide. Not for Rhone ti Flavinius. I feel a pinch in my right breast and glance down to see a dagger buried to the hilt in my chest. The ribs caught it before it reached my heart. Rhone’s other hand punches toward my throat. I duck my head to take the punch on the chin and take his opposite elbow on the side of my head. At the same time, he tries a kravat move to sweep my legs. Instead of stepping out of the kravat move, I step in to him and drive my knee upward into his stomach armor. An electric thrill from his shield courses through my leg, deadening the limb. Still, the force of the blow lifts Rhone off his feet. He lands like a cat and hurls his broken rifle at me. I bat it aside and narrowly dodge an acid pack he throws to cover his retreat. Acid eats into the deck and hangs in the air in a fine mist between us.
I go around. Breath comes shallow and filled with blood. Fire spreads through my diaphragm. My left lung is punctured.
Knowing Rhone is a menace at a distance, I try to close and overwhelm him with my mass and speed. He keeps space between us, boosting backward and upward with his gravBoots. He reloads his pistol and fires down at me as he goes. I hide behind my aegis. The rounds affect my shield in a strange way. It’s overheating too fast.
How many kinds of ammo does he have?
I don’t know what’s happening with Atlas and Cassius. My situation is turning desperate. I can’t hide behind my aegis much longer. It’s glowing red, melting the scarabSkin into the flesh of my left forearm. No time to go back for a Praetorian rifle. With a roar of pain, I lunge out from my aegis’s cover and hurl my razor at Rhone like a javelin.
It takes him in the right shoulder and he spins in the air. His shield spits sparks and he careens into the side of a nightRaptor. He spills down its fuselage to crash onto its wing. I leap up to join him only to find him already recovered. He lost his pistol in the collision but hisarmor is an equalizer, and he extracts my razor from his shoulder to grip in his right fist. He stomps his boot and another knife pops up into his left hand.
Barking like a dog, he charges me.
He’s a gorydamn terror.
Unarmed, I search for a weapon. I spot his pistol on the deck below and bail off the wing before he closes. I grab his pistol on the run, drop, turn, and fire just as he bears down on me. The shots finish his pulseShield and I roll under the sweep of my own razor as he swings it at my head. I spin around as I come out behind him and kick his legs. It’s the legs you go for on an armored opponent because with their balance compromised, the weight of their armor becomes a liability. My shinbone almost breaks, but he teeters off-balance and begins to fall. Still he manages to whip the razor back at me and tear the pistol from my hand.
It is not his first time handling a razor. Not in the least.
Stripped of the pistol, I back off from him. He cracks the whip at my eyes and underhand throws the boot knife. I track it and catch it and hurl it back at his face. He blocks it by raising his armored arm, and I sprint at him.
He’s terrifying at any range, but up close I can overpower him. I hit him before he can bring the razor around on me and tackle him to the ground. I manage to pry free the razor as we roll. It bounces away. He’s out of blades but ends up on top. He drives his right hand toward my neck. I raise my left forearm just in time to intercept the knife that emerges from his armor. Gorydamn. Another one? Unlike the first pistol rounds, the knife has a diamond edge. It goes through the scarabSkin like paper and emerges through my forearm, nearly taking my left eye too.
I block a second stab with the same arm. This time the knife goes through the forearm into the side of my face. It goes into my mouth and cuts through a few teeth. Its tip just tickles the roof of my mouth. He’s so close to killing me, but he’s just not strong enough to pound the blade home. I push the blade back out of my mouth and I twist my arm and push down. I trap the blade against his chest and roll him till I’m on top. Keeping my gored arm tight to his chest, I use my left knee to pin his right arm. I reach blindly with my right hand for my discarded razor. I grab the blade instead of the hilt and lose the top third of my pinky and ring finger for the effort.
Rhone’s resistance suddenly slackens. His hips push up against me with a boost from his gravBoots. I’m rocked off-balance. My momentum takes me over his head, freeing the knife from my impaled forearm. Fortunately, that momentum also pushes me toward my razor. Sprawling forward, I grasp the hilt with my mutilated hand and swing backward in a daisy-cutter stroke. Resistance jerks my arm. I scramble up to see Rhone standing behind me with a long black needle clutched in his steel fist. He tries to take a step. He cannot. My razor cut through both of his calves just above his gravBoots.
Grunting, he spills sideways and lands with a thump on the deck. I stumble toward him. He squirms like a crab on its back. Even now he’s dangerous. He hurls the black needle at me. I slap it away with my razor. Gods know what it was coated with. I stomp on his chest.
“If I was born Gold, I’d eat you alive,” he says with a chuckle. “No Blood. Of Silenius. No—”
I spike my razor through the crown of his dragon helmet and into his head three times. Knowing even Rhone ti Flavinius can’t survive a trio of holes through his brain, I spit blood and broken teeth down on his body. Then I leave him to his death spasms and fetch his pistol from the bloodied deck. I load a new magazine from his thigh cache.
Numb and seeing double, I stumble toward Atlas and Cassius. With Rhone’s opening shots on my legs, it’s hard to walk. The wound in my face oozes blood. My left arm is badly punctured and a few ligaments severed. Each breath is frothy with blood. I couldn’t keep up with the dance that lies ahead.
Atlas and Cassius are locked in a deadly game. Cassius’s right hand is gone. He’s fighting with his left. Three deep slashes score his chest plate. His armor bleeds electricity. Atlas’s face is a crimson stain, half his scalp is hanging off the side of his head, his left leg drags behind him, and three long gashes flay his chest. Cassius’s bright razor and Atlas’s hasta blur like butterfly wings. I’m too far away. I raise the pistol but can’t find an opening that doesn’t put Cassius in the line of fire. I stumble closer. My left eye must be damaged. It can’t focus.
Cassius is winning, though something is wrong with his armor. Acid or something has eaten through the back. His armor is quitting. The helmet stuttering up and down. He cuts it off completely and delivers a horizontal sweep that should take Atlas in half at the waist. Atlas handsprings over the blow, using Cassius’s own shoulder for leverage.
He stabs down as he passes overhead, and pierces Cassius’s armor just inside his left shoulder. The blade sinks two handbreadths deep and sticks as Cassius twists. Atlas abandons the weapon and dodges two of Cassius’s return thrusts, darts back in, takes his blade, retreats, and sweeps at Cassius’s armored head. It’s a feint to draw Cassius’s guard. Atlas pivots and drives his hasta underhand toward Cassius’s heart.
