His comrades had no answer; Garr’s tongue licked out to wipe at his dirty lip, followed by a sudden slap of hand on my face while the rage boiled in his leonine skull.
We were back in the alley under the weight of the looming buildings and their gutshot decay. No sign of Wren. A few men came loping up from the debris.
“Nothing,” said one.
A darker rumble came from the sky. Eyes looked up. To a looming mass, turtle-green with a nose of mottled color. It was all menace, some fantastic monster as it tilted toward us. Before the first red flares came spearing from its port wing, I dove for cover. A bullet sheared through the thigh of the man next to me. I saw the flicker of pain register in his face and a barrel reaching from the second story window. I recognized the arm movement at once. Wren! So, she’d survived. Been playing possum. More fire laid in behind us. Blest came charging up the alley like a mad bull, all kamikaze, spreading fire in Froy’s direction.
Mong’s ship bore down on us, the pilot now recognizing the source of the blast back at the warehouse.
An odd thing happened, as if time warped. The ship slewed sideways, as if racked by gunfire from the side.
I strained my eyes upward. The ship pulsed green as a missile hit it broadside. For a few seconds it wavered as if it would drop out of the sky. But it didn’t. The Warhawk turned and sent a red arc of fury toward the city in the direction of Froy’s rebel base. A deafening boom rocked the air.
“Fools!” Froy croaked, clutching at his hair. “They need to launch triple RPGs at a single point to pierce those shields and armor—Aie!” His anguished voice rose above the roar of engines as some shrapnel caught his left leg in a cloud of fire. Black smoke mushroomed over the tops of the ruined buildings. I guessed the rebel base was no more. The massive army-grey bird of prey swung its nose toward us again.
In the cloud of dust, Garr lifted his R3 to plug me full of holes.
“Wait!” Froy choked on his own spit. He lay sprawled there amidst the chaos of men’s screams, grimacing in pain, but lucid now, clutching his ruined leg. “Rusco, run while you can. Mong’s taken enough sacrifices today. We don’t need more. Get away from here, you stupid idiot!—before I change my mind.”
I tipped my head. “Peace be with you, Froy. We’ll see each other in hell.” I half staggered from the shock concussions.
I limped off and heard Froy’s savage groan as Garr and two of his last men dragged him to shelter. “Rusco!” he called back. “You see what war does to a man? Makes us no better than beasts! Killers and rapists. So far down the rabbit hole we go, we don’t know who we are any more.”
In a moment of lucidity, Froy had spoken truth. His last words evoked a sad memory in my brain. How far had I gone, with my morals twisted like pretzels and my long-running policy of turning a blind eye to the suffering of the universe? Hustling here, grubbing there, without a second thought of tomorrow or the consequences of my actions.
The gunmen dragged Froy off, cussing and screaming, his ruined leg beyond repair if he didn’t get some regen soon.
Wren came stumbling up out of the building, her rifle cocked. She was ready to shoot anything that moved. Crouching, she moved in from pile to pile. Another deep rumble shook the sky. I turned. The Warhawk had edged in, banking sharply, its shields taking some of the damage of the RPG hit. But now another ebon shape rose over the crumbled buildings. It appeared out of the sky like a magic trick and for an instant a flicker of hope rose. Fire lashed out from its port guns and hammered the Warhawk in her rear flank, wresting wide its lethal fire, sending the grey streak smashing into the building next to us and crumbling it to ruin.
The building overhead exploded, sending a fresh spray down on us.
“Down!” I shrieked, covering my head pelted with bits of mortar and stone, my throat hoarse as the shockwaves rang through my bones.
Blest was panting beside me, his face nicked, his arms cut and a wild confused look in his eyes.
A whine of engines came out of nowhere. A hulking brown fuselage with an hourglass figure came swirling out of the dust to land in the square not fifty feet away. Bantam! Noss couldn’t have been a more joyous sight. He must have heard my signal. Shoddy of me to have ever badmouthed him. Dust pooled at our feet and stung our eyes and lungs.
We coughed and stumbled out of the billowing cloud toward the giant black curve of the smoking hull where Bantam had taken fire. The cargo hatch slid open. We piled in and the engines gunned as the hatch slid back. We were thrown to the far side as the sudden g’s accelerated us skyward. Noss was efficient; he’d gotten us this far. If there had been two of those bastard Warhawks though, we’d be goners now.
Return fire chipped against our starboard armor. I shuddered at the damage to our shields. I shook out
