A spray of lancer fire came flying back through the door at us. Astrid hit the floor with me, then scrabbled to her knees. “Back, back to the parlor!”
“It’s an inferno,” I shouted.
“It’s our way out,” she yelled back.
I didn’t see how that could be. We were hundreds of feet up without hovermotors. The little device in my pistol could not possibly hold the weight of two grown adults. Still, I followed her. She at least had an idea, which was better than me.
I stumbled into the burning room to see Astrid shoot out the remaining window. It shattered, tumbling in jagged shards to the ground. Expertly, Astrid slung her lancer behind her back, then she gestured to me. “Put your arms around my neck.” She crouched so I could do so, then wrapped one arm around my waist. “Hold on.”
“Wait, what are we going to—” Before I could finish my question, Astrid leapt out the window, taking me with her.
Before I could scream, Astrid’s free, ungloved hand bit into the palace’s crystal wall. Digging shimmering furrows into the smooth surface, Astrid rode the wall down the side of the tower. In seconds, her feet hit the ground, and she let me put my feet under me. My bare feet scrunched on a pearlescent gravel pathway. A line of manicured poplar trees separated us from the rest of the palace gardens.
“There,” she said, “we should be safe for a moment…”
A motion behind her caught my attention. The assassin from above rose from the burning wreck of his hoversteed, dirt and soot smudging his grey hide. He was huge, larger than even the Emperor’s guards. He dragged his burned, lancer-ruined leg behind him as he raised his undamaged rotary repeater.
“Look out!” I brought my pistol to bear and fired. I hithim, but the distance was too great and his shield deflected the disconnected magma stream. Fortunately for us, his deadly spray of lancer bolts bounced harmlessly off our shields as well. The effect was blinding, and when the barrage ceased, I blinked away dark spots in my vision to see the demon advancing as he slotted another drum into the bottom of his gun. I readied my weapon, prepared to wait until the last moment before firing, hoping to get a clean shot before he could.
“That little fucker,” Astrid said, swinging her tri-barrel carbine off her back, up to her shoulder and into shooting position. As the assassin worked his repeater’s charging handle and swung it around to point at us, Astrid calmly shot him through the head.
We did not have time to celebrate our victory as a lancer bolt blew a half-meter crater in the gravel path beside us. I looked up to see, high above, a human hanging out the window from which we’d descended, reloading a long-barreled marksman lancer. I couldn’t make out what uniform they wore, if any.
“Move,” I said. “Into the trees.”
“They won’t stop a lancer bolt,” Astrid protested, staring up at the tower as if itching to climb back up and claw the offending bastard’s face off.
I grabbed her wrist. “They can’t shoot us if they can’t see us.”
Reluctantly, Astrid allowed me to pull her across the open lawn and into the trees, dodging two more shots before we were safely concealed under the leaves.
I took a moment to rest, but Astrid tapped her temple and began speaking. “Guards, there are assassins in the Imperial suite. Do your fucking job! Get a squad to me right fucking now, or I’m going to rip your tongues out through your throat and listen to your sputtering excuses as you choke on your own blood.”
Inter-cranial communicators as well? “I guess it takes a lot of cyber to run an empire.”
Astrid seemed to notice me for the first time, as though she’d forgotten I was there. “Not really, but it helps. I need every advantage I can get, what with my impure bloodline and all. I can’t grow another three feet or develop additional musculature overnight, so I make do with cyber implants.” Astrid considered her bare body with a sigh. “I wish I had scales or dermal plates, or at least a tough outer hide instead of this useless smooth skin.”
“I don’t mind it,” I said with a smirk.
“Of course you don’t mind. On you, it looks good. On me, it looks fragile.”
“No one in the Alliance would ever claim you look fragile,” I commented, observing the corded muscles running the length of her four-foot-long legs, the sheer power of her towering form.
Instead of pleasing her, my comment seemed to increase her dissatisfaction with her body. “I know. I’m the perfect compromise, too huge and hideous for Alliance humans, too puny and pathetic for Imperial demons. Attractive to none.”
I think you’re beautiful beyond measure, I thought, but a warning voice inside my head told me Astrid was not ready to hear such calming words at this moment.
Angrily, Astrid scanned the sky. “Where are they? Damn them all, I thought my idiot guards were better than this. I haven’t had a call this close since the war started.”
“You’ve had many assassination attempts?” I asked, latching onto the new topic.
“They were nearly constant during the coup and right after.” She sighed. “I guess the guards have gotten lazy. Or turned against me.”
Just then, a flight of hoversteeds whined over the treetops.Several soared up the tower to the broken level where the sniper had been, disembarking the dragoons riding double behind the saddle. The rest landed in the clearing, their riders jumping off and fanning out, weapons raised.
I stood straight. “Right then. Shall we go scream their faces off?”
Astrid’s face grew even more clouded. “I just might.”
