We move into the hangar as quietly as possible in heavy armor. Three Lions have popped the lift door open a few meters. It’s a big door—thirty meters wide for tanks. We form up around the Lions. Holiday drops a drone into the darkness. I watch its feed on my HUD. The shaft looks clear, even on thermal. The shaft terminus is deep within the moon but still within Sector One’s pie-like shape. It won’t get us back to our lines in the Hollows but it’ll get us close.
Holiday spots something I don’t and motions a team to deploy nanowire across the mouth of the lift entrance. They string a dozen strands of the near-invisible polyene fiber. Casually, as if checking the door for traps. Her drone is still snooping down the shaft as she replays what caught her eye: cold spots arrayed around the circumference of the tunnel shaft two hundred meters below. A few degrees lower than the surrounding metal. Scores of them. GhostCloak dampeners. Good ones. The tunnel is lined with soldiers. It’s a trap.
Apollonius for sure. He didn’t know what level we’d access on, but somehow he knew this shaft was our way out. I thought I’d randomized our movements enough.
“I’m picking up a signal. Stasis field. Probably in the shaft. We’d be frozen right above them if we dropped. Flies in amber.”
I eye the darkness of the garage behind us through the lenses in the back of my helmet. He’s watching us right now. Maybe sending men to flank us. Maybe coming himself.
“Why haven’t they made a move?” I ask.
“They don’t know which of us you are.Better if we’re flies in amber.”
Meaning they don’t know which one of us not to kill, and theyrespect the quality of my Lions enough to know they’ll have to kill most of us. So, Apollonius is trying to take me alive after all. Did Lune make him a team player?
“Let’s punch them in the mouth and scram.”Holiday nods to the walkways above.“Go through engineering. Cook this shaft. We have other options.”
“There’s another option. Do we have a net?”
“We have two.”
“Lions, Kavax is captured. He has sensitive information in his head, and he is our friend. Many of you know him. Many of you have attended his namedays. The only way we will get him back is if we have a prisoner of equal worth to trade. But we have a chance to take one here.” They answer with a chorus of affirmative radio clicks. “He mustn’t suspect a trap. Holiday, you’re up.”
“I’ll use the drone,”Holiday says.“Soon as they move, false retreat, first pride into quicksand formation. Second pride fire support. Third pride secure hangar doors. Let’s not get flanked. Exit is engineering. Sovereign, you’re rear.”
“No. I’m first pride. You lot might need the muscle.”
Holiday pauses but doesn’t argue.“Do not draw your razor.”
I nod, ready for violence. Holiday guides the drone back up the shaft and lets it get extra snoopy. It coasts toward one of the cold spots. Closer. Closer. A laugh echoes in the shaft. The cloak melts away. A bull’s head emerges from the shadows in front of our distant drone.
“Found you,”says Apollonius.
A fly-sized drone blinks above. Apollonius must have one on every level leading to the shaft.
We drop charges and let Apollonius see us flee. Through my rear lens, I watch the charges go off. The gap in the door becomes a column of fire. Golds cocooned in pulseShields rise through the flames and slip into the hangar after us. Right into the nanowire. The nanowire activates and oscillates back and forth like a saw, at a rate of a million oscillations a minute. It goes through armor like butter. I’ve never seen men cut into such weirdly precise blocks of meat and metal as the first three who meet the wire. The next two hack their way through it and chase us. Then Apollonius rushes in backed by Grays.
“Now,”Holiday orders, and my Lions turn on the enemy and fire as one on Holiday’s targeting tag. The first Gold disintegrates astwenty-five expert marksmen and I converge our fire. The Lion next to me bucks back, arms broken like twigs as he’s shot by a pulseFist. Holiday targets the next Gold. So do twenty-four rifles. He is deleted five paces from us. Metal pings off our shields. One of his legs hits my shoulder.
This all in four seconds. It let Apollonius get closer.
Pride two fires on the Grays rushing out of the shaft, and Apollonius charges into my pride. We fall back like quicksand to receive him. Our plan is that six of us are to pepper him with fire, two are to shoot nets, and two are to deploy a shieldDome.
Something goes wrong. It happens too fast and too close to see what. One of the net Lions is cut in half. His fired net flails overhead like a sheet in the wind. Another Lion is knocked out of sight. I glimpse Apollonius coming toward me in a rush of dark purple metal. I fire two shots before he’s on me like a kicking horse. He drives a shoulder into me without looking and hacks off a Lion’s arm. He doesn’t know which one I am. His shoulder check dazed me, but he expected it to knock me out. I’m no Gray. He’s facing the other way, about to kill our last Lion with a net gun.
“Holiday, bodyguard.”
Apollonius also has cameras in the back of his helmet. I reach for my concealed razor. My reach draws his full attention like blood draws a leviathan. He turns, a mass of terror and metal.
“All hail Lionheart,”he purrs.
His giant razor cleaves through another Lion as it comes toward me. It sparks just in front of my helmet, blocked by a glowing blue aegis. Holiday’s. I seize the moment, dive low, like Darrow taught me, razor out, and spear Apollonius in his left knee. He doesn’t make a sound. He headbutts me on the crown of my helmet and my HUD shorts out.
I go right into the floor. Our netman fires. The net snares Apollonius and electrocutes his armor. His razor is trapped, but one of his arms isn’t. He takes my razor from his knee and cuts himself free. I scramble to my feet, woozy, and see the shieldDome is up. An iridescent half dome projects from a Lion’s back unit. It ends a half meter above the floor. If it meets the floor, it’ll blow like a bomb. That Lion has to stay upright and out of the fight.
Apollonius is trapped inside the shield with eight of us.
His men outside it, fighting my other Lions, go into a frenzy whenthey see the risk to their commander. Holiday and two Lions fire into Apollonius on full auto. His shield dies with a thunderclap. He loses his grip on my razor. It skitters out from beneath the dome. My Lions converge on him and take out his legs. Glaucus armlocks Apollonius’s left arm. Others grab his right arm. I tackle his knees as hard as I can. He teeters and falls on his back. A Lion stomps on his hand and kicks his huge razor out from the dome. I help lock down his legs.
