“Levar? What’s going on?” she blearily asked.
“No time to explain in full, so let me sum up. There was a coup. You were captured and taken to a command center floating above the palace, and we’re rescuing you. Let me know when you can walk or hold a lancer.”
Astrid put a hand to her head. “I don’t understand. My head hurts. Everything’s cloudy.”
“I know, darling, that’s the drugs they used to knock youout. It’s just a bad trip,” I said, using the words I had spoken to her after a bad rave back at the Academy where I held her hair and rubbed her back as she vomited half the night through. “Just listen to my voice and fight through it. It will pass.”
It was at that moment we began to take lancer fire.
Bolts arced down at us from a nearby ziggurat, blowing half-meter wide holes in the ferrocrete floor. Tredesceu and Pavlov returned fire, Pavlov unloading both carbine barrels before reaching for more shells, while Tredesceu simply dropped his. I saved my shot, waiting for a target to appear. A head popped into view, and I fired at the wall below it. The head disappeared, and I could see the corpse of the demon I’d killed in the hole I’d blown through the balcony barrier.
“Boylan, we heard gunshots. Where are you?” Darius demanded over the radio.
“We’re in an access lane outside the common area,” I replied, ducking into cover as another group of armed demons emerged ahead of us.
“Are you still on the move?” Darius asked.
I popped up and fired my carbine, then I dropped the empty oversized weapon and drew my two pistols. “Negative. We’re cut off…” A bolt missed my face by centimeters. I turned to the side and shot the Imp who had aimed at me down a floorside corridor, then scuttled around a ziggurat corner to avoid shots from his friends. “And pinned down. A dramatic rescue would be welcome right about now.”
“We’re on our way, but we’ve encountered resistance,” Darius explained. “Tilly’s here. She wants to come to you.”
At first, I wanted to scold Darius for bringing Tilly to a war zone unarmed, but Tilly was a war steed. She would not have stood to be left behind. Besides, we could use her now.
“Send her over. She can carry the Emperor,” I replied.
“Roger. She is on her way.”
I shot another Imperial who tried too ambitious an advance, then pulled another pistol. It was faster to draw fresh weapons than reload, but I was on my last two lancers, only one of which was my size. We had plenty of shells, but the enemy was pressing closer. I worried that soon, we’d be down to zeroblades.
“Cut me loose and give me a lancer,” Astrid ordered. I smiled.
“Honor to serve, Emperor,” Pavlov said, undoing the buckles across his chest to release his ruler, then passed her a gunbelt with a holstered lancer and two score magma shells. Astrid knelt, a little wobbly, but she gripped the pistol firmly and sighted down its barrel.
We fled from intersection to intersection in short rushes, keeping ahead of our pursuers, but their numbers began to tell. The interior walls around us disintegrated under the fire of so many lancers, but lasted long enough to keep us alive. I could tell we were being herded away from Darius’s rescue force, and knew if we kept going far enough, we’d soon be trapped against the outer hull.
That moment came faster than expected. We reached the end of a particularly long corridor to find a two-meter drop to a wide strip stretching from my toes to a gunmetal wall. I would have stumbled over the edge had Astrid not caught me. Before I could thank her, she shoved me off my feet. A lancer bolt sizzled between the two of us.
Landing prone, I caught sight of Tredesceu as an Imperial shot him in the chest, disintegrating most of the Yezhidian’s torso. I swore and fired at the Imp, missing her, but driving her back into cover. Pavlov grabbed the Emperor and pulled her onto the lower landing, providing concealment at least. Lancer bolts chewed up the ferrocrete floor, but I rolled over the lip and fell into relative safety, hoping no high-speed railcars came whipping around the chamber’s circumference before I could find a safe way off the tracks.
“Where are we?” I asked.
Pavlov pointed to the curving gunmetal wall five meters across the landing from us. “That’s the outer hull.”
An idea lit in my mind. “They shoot through that, they depressurize the station?”
“This portion of it, yes,” Pavlov replied.
“Change of plans. To the hull!” I tried to stand, but Pavlov grabbed my shoulder and yanked me off my feet.
“Do you want to die?” the big demon said.
“If we’re there, they won’t dare shoot or risk killing themselves. They’ll have to come with zeroblades, and we’ll still be able to shoot,” I explained.
Pavlov looked unconvinced, but then Astrid spoke through clenched teeth.
“Are you disobeying my Consort’s order, soldier?”
Pavlov stiffened. “No, Your Majesty.”
