They darted from the conference room into the main atrium of the Furnace, but the attackers had already beaten them there. There must have been a second entry broken into the rebel’s headquarters somewhere, Tera thought. Judging by the number of white bodyshells and frantic cultists locked into combat with the soldiers of the People’s Union and Opes, they had stormed multiple points at once. This was an orchestrated attack, Tera realized.
Two of the Council soldiers looked up from a fresh kill and spotted Tera and Ethan. They raised their rifles, but the two female rebels had a bead on them first. Tera and their escort opened fire, the bodyshell on the right tearing open as bullets hit it while the one on the left dropped dead as the life was snatched from it. Ethan trembled a little as he watched the white machines fall to the floor. He couldn’t help but feel helpless.
A familiar voice cried out from their right, but something exploded in the belly of the atrium at the same moment, so neither Tera or Ethan could make out what it said. Their escort shouted something in response. Then, the form she was addressing became clear. Betsy Clevinger ran toward them, ducking as bullets zipped over their heads. A bit of blood streamed from a small wound on her forehead. The speaker embedded in her skull seemed a little crumpled.
“There you are!” Betsy cried. “We have to get everyone out of here! Now!”
“We’ve got to fight!” Tera replied. “They’re attacking our home.”
“And they’re going to take it,” Martin Clevinger interrupted. “There’s no sense in dying for this place. We need to evacuate everyone if we can; get them all to the gunships. Load everyone on that we can.”
“Where’s Gauge?” Betsy asked, looking around at the immediate faces around her.
“Right here, Ma’am,” the rebel’s familiar voice said as he appeared on their side. “Let’s get moving!”
Like a pack of wolves, they started to move in unison through the chaos. The rebels outnumbered the attackers three to one out in the atrium, but that ratio was shifting by the second as more cultists and soldiers poured in through the tunnels.
“Gauge,” Betsy said to the rebel, reaching out to stop him. “We have to save whatever equipment we can.”
“It’s not worth it, ma’am,” Gauge replied. “We don’t have the manpower nor the space to bring them with.”
The old woman almost stopped to protest but was interrupted by a loud crash from behind. The group collectively turned to see the doorway to the makeshift conference room explode outward as the monster’s enormous sword broke through it. The wall around it came crumbling down, burying a pair of rebel soldiers in close-quarters combat with a cultist. With a booming roar, the cyborg behemoth pushed through the debris and used the backswing of its blade to decapitate one of the Union bodyshells.
“To the ships!” Martin started shouting through the speaker in his wife’s head to no one in particular. “Everyone, fall back to the loading bay!”
“To the loading bay!” Gauge also shouted, looking at the other rebels who fought and scurried around them. “Fall back!”
The entourage moved like a shark through seaweed, cutting a way through the battle to the western side of the chamber. The loading bay was on the opposite side of the atrium from them, with at least five hundred feet of no man’s land to cross. Tera and the other I.I. woman remained on their flanks, firing at any Shedders or Council soldiers who got too close. Every dozen feet or so, they would stop to avoid some crumbling part of the Furnace or to fight off the attackers. Every time they stopped, the battle waged closer. The cyborg monster continued to cut through rebels — and sometimes cultists — like a reaper at harvest. Screams filled the atrium.
Ethan felt a hand on his wrist before his brain acknowledged that he was being pulled away from the group. At first, he thought it was Tera or the other I.I. leading him to safety, but he could see all his comrades huddled together before him. He looked back and saw one of the Shedders clutching onto his wrist, a wicked grin on the assailant’s face. He clutched a dagger in his other hand, but didn’t stab at Ethan. Instead, he dragged him through the battle towards one of the tunnels in the side of the chamber.
When he realized what was going on, he started to pull back. Without hesitation, the cultist spun around and punched Ethan in his wounded eye.
“None of that,” the Shedder hissed. “No need to resist.”
“There’s always a need,” a familiar voice growled from behind Ethan.
Before he knew what was going on, a form leaped over him and tackled the Shedder to the grate. Ethan could only register a blur of pale cloth and mechanical parts as his rescuer slammed the cultist’s head into the metal floor over and over. Once the cultist realized what was happening, he tried to throw the form off him. The two of them wrestled on the ground.
Ethan hesitated for a moment, but it was imperceptible to the naked eye. He dived forward and retrieved the dagger that had fell to the floor during the melee. With a swift jerk of his arm, he drove the blade deep into the Shedder’s chest, just to the side of his sternum. Ethan could feel the man’s breath ooze out of him like air from a deflating kickball. He stared down at the dead man for a moment, the battle that surrounded him fading from focus.
Only a second passed before he felt a metal hand on his shoulder. He spun around with the dagger in his clutched fist to see the bodyshell of King Hum.
“They’re running that way,” the young monarch said, pointing through the chaos at the entourage Ethan had been pried from. “Come with me.”
He didn’t
