The crack came like lightning, a sizzle-flash-boom that drowned out even the light.
Firenze closed his eyes, too late, and raised his arm to shield his face. Heat coursed over him, a tropic-wet blast furnace turned loose upon the hall.
The explosion slammed him into the alcove. His medlink screamed. His teeth shook from the impact, and he tasted hot metal.
Something wet rained, a torrent of sticky-sweet-hot crashed over him, thicker than oil and chunky like pasta.
All he could hear was a whine.
He opened his eyes. The world moved as if stuck in molasses.
The walls were stained, flash-burned, and covered in purple splatter.
Boiled-hot crimson dripped from the ceiling.
Bits of charred bone stuck from the bulkheads like darts, shot out like porcupine-quills from the ruin that had been the crowd.
Shoes, singed but intact, littered the soaked royal carpet, bits of flesh still stuck inside. Tongues of flame licked over the debris, charred circles like occult candles, burning in the red rain.
Something slid down the side of his face, caught in his open mouth like a putrid maggot had burst on his tongue.
Firenze gagged. He ripped the jellied gore from his face, hurled it to the ground. He staggered from the wall, nearly impaled himself on a femur-spear jutting from the cladding. He tripped on a melted-plastic briefcase, its seals burst open, contents and liner aflame. He crashed to the ground in the middle of the waste and beheld his doom.
Down the tunnel of dripping gore, past the screaming wounded and ravaged dead, the goliath stood framed in the promenade lights. Its chrome shoulders gleamed. Its eyeless faceplate leered. The juggernaut raised the steaming emitter of its century laser, rested it on its armored hip like a cavalry spear, and took stock of its ruinous work.
Like water rushing to fill a crater, the crowd surged back into the hall. They bleated like animals, faces terror-twisted beyond recognition. This corridor was death, but the only escape lay through it. Firenze tried to fend them off, raised one numbed arm in protest. Through the gaps in the onrushing wave, he saw the titan lower its laser, preparing for another blast.
Despite himself, he began to laugh.
Hill snatched him from the crush, slammed him face-first into the wall. He couldn't stop cackling, not when he saw the soldier's gore-slicked and flash-burned face, not when the pain rode him like a broken mare, nor even when the next thunder-crash washed over them.
Cast in the armor of madness, he paid no mind to the horror. Hill grabbed him by the handle and shove-ran him down the corridor, fleeing the blasts of the devil's trumpet. Screams and wails blended in the ringing tinnitus. Pain and flash-shadows merged in blindness. Firenze couldn't stop laughing.
A final doorway passed, and he crashed into the far wall. He slumped to the floor, slicked by gore. For some goddamn reason, all he could think about was the spaghetti his mom used to make, and that just made him cackle harder.
Hill was screaming something, pointing to the floor in some caricature of 'stay down'. The soldier had stopped inside the lifeboat to give that order, and that saved his life. Two steps past him, Hayes had one foot through the threshold when it lit ruby-red. Hayes vanished into the light.
Something punched through Firenze's unarmored chest, a javelin cast from human bone. Blood and shit rained around him, and the ceiling was on fire. His undersuit hissed, painkillers flooded, and he couldn't stop laughing.
Hill was howling, his mouth frozen in a silent curse. The soldier whirled back into the hall, tried to raise his gun, but the tide was on him, pushing, shoving, and jostling him out of position. Hill shoved one, two, three broken people into the raft. Every time he tried to get the long-gun off his sling, another came, and he hurled them towards safety. Then, too many came at once. The human wave crashed into him, and he toppled into the boat-
Crimson thunder cleft the tide. Hill fell to the deck, pinned under the upper-half of a severed torso, its pain-frozen mouth silently working out a final scream.
The doorframe darkened, and Firenze saw his end, once more.
The goliath loomed like a statue, its faceless helmet surveying the carnage. Steam hissed from its pack, a parody of a weary sigh, and it raised its weapon once more, to burn them down like rats in a hole.
Kawalski slammed into it from the flank, like a monkey trying to tackle an elephant. Her combat knife flashed, jammed between the servos on its right arm. The behemoth froze, one arm immobilized. Then it pivoted towards her, more piston than human. She ducked, dodged-
Its left arm came forward. Something burst around its wrist, coughed like a stormcloud. A whistle split through Firenze's tinnitus like a torch through jello. A tornado of monofilament carved the air, carried by magneto-bolas from an electric slingshot.
Kawalski was gone. Bits and pieces painted across the walls. The juggernaut lowered its arm, then ripped the knife from its servos. Ponderously, it turned towards the survivors.
A scorching wind roared from Firenze's left. Hill had worked free from the corpse-pile, and his machinegun ran white-hot. Spark cascades danced over the titan's armor, but it did not flinch. Almost lazily, it raised its cannon.
Hill's gun clattered empty, and he hurled it aside. Deprived of his weapon, cornered, and outgunned, Hill drew his knife and charged. Just like his sergeant, he would go down fighting.
In the far corner of the boat, tattered remains of families huddled. Firenze couldn't hear their sobs over the ringing, but he could read the terror on their ravaged faces. Firenze turned from them to Hill's
