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Primordial light. Intense, tiny, like the pupil of a god followed by a second expanding flash so brilliant and vast it makes my eyelids transparent and reveals every bone, joint, and blood vessel in the Red pitman stuck outside my canopy. I see the X-rayed bones of a dozen others through their flesh. A curled engineer makes a silhouette, transparent like the image of a fetus asleep in the womb.
The flash contracts to reveal a mutinous fireball at the hypocenter of the blast. Air, grass, rock, metal, and men vaporize as their matter heats to match the heart of a sun.
A wall of thermal energy washes outward. A ghost of fire walks through me. The Red’s eyes that look like my mother’s begin to bubble and then they melt with the rest of him. In the wake of the heat, a colossal wave of pressure races toward us at the speed of sound. The skyhook rocks backward against the face of the mountain. The bones of the Red shatter and blow away in the wind. His severed hand falls off inside the canopy. My boots spark on the flattop surface as the shockwave pushes me back. I stagger, supported by the Howlers. Pitmen who took shelter behind mechs in front of us look like autumn leaves as their tattered bodies are hurled off the floating platform down into the mountains. Others are lifted from their feet and slam into starShells, turning to pulp. Clothing is torn away. Blues and Oranges with weaker bones are pulverized on the spot to become liquid bags held together by bubbling flesh.
Then the debris.
Charcoal birds fall from the sky and crumble to pieces on the concrete. RipWing detritus hails down. A flattened tank cartwheels past, thrown dozens of kilometers from the plains, to crash into a mountain façade above our base. A great grumbling fills the mountain range as hundreds of avalanches roll down the sheer granite cliffs. I swear I even see the planet ripple. I look up, and up, and up, through my starShell canopy; the fireball articulates skyward, with a vortex of debris and smoke swirling around a molten heart of fire where once there was my Second Army.
A million men, tanks, and arms to ash.
The hollow abyss of despair calls to me. The voice that found me in the Jackal’s prison tomb. Reaper, Reaper, Reaper. Look what you have done. Look what you are. In your shadow, nothing can survive.
Somewhere above, Atalantia will be smiling.
Alexandar’s mech steps to my side. I search desperately for Rhonna. She staggers to her feet, her pulseArmor fried, but she is alive. Relief floods me.
“Your order, sir?” Alexandar asks.
The mushroom is reflected in his canopy.
Orders? What orders can be given in this madness? Our long-range coms are down. I cannot adjust my plan. Thraxa is unsupported. About to be cut off. I would pray if I knew any gods were listening. Let the First Army have survived the blast. Let the Morning Star have arrived in time for them to shelter under her shields. Let there be life in all this ash. No god listens. There are only men. And what one does, another may undo. That is my only religion. That of the hand and the lever.
“Midnight, are you out there?”
“Barely. EMP nearly fried me. Ship is falling to pieces.” Even at short range I can barely hear him.
“The storm is coming in earnest. Can you make it to Kydon?”
“If I have to flap the wings myself.”
“When you get there, tell Thraxa to break off and make for Tyche. The Second can’t reinforce her. The First is coming to help her retreat to Tyche.”
“Where are you going?”
“To make sure Tyche is still ours when you get there.”
He says nothing for a moment. “Happy travels, sir. Midnight out.”
His engines flare and he lurches away. Only my starShells remain on the platform. I give them orders to abandon the stuttering skyhook and gather inside the opening blast doors of the garage. “Rhonna.” She whirls to face me. “The Helldivers are inside. See if they got a spare rig. I need a full-metal god.”
“Yessir.”
Five minutes later, I float over the starShells and the huge Drachenjägers behind them. They stretch into the mountain, rank upon metal rank. Helldiver Legion, the Armored Fifteenth. Martians all, my first and best Drachenjäger legion. I rode with them to end the Siege of Olympia to chase the Minotaur out of Cassius’s former home, and then again at Agea against Atlas and the Ash Lord.
“Helldiver Legion! Enemy iron is inbound. Our coms are down. Soon the storm will claim theirs. The First Army will hit them at the Children and then retreat to Tyche. The city will soon come under siege by at least one full army group.
“Legate Telemanus believes the Second Army is now streaming to Tyche to relieve that siege and clear her path of retreat. Of the Second Army, we are all that remains. If Tyche falls, our brothers are lost. Will Tyche fall?” In reply, five thousand pairs of Drachenjäger boots hammer the floor of the cavern with a seismic booom. “Atalantia thinks the Second Army is ash. Are we ash?” Booom. Booom. “Are we afraid?” Boom. Boom. Boom. “What are we!”
“HELLDIVERS!”
“Form columns!”
The air warps with the thermal distortion of five thousand drachen engines growling to life. I see Rhonna slide into a black rig at the rear. Its arms pump as the bolts that stud her body sync with the Drachenjäger. My Howlers rise around me. The Arcosian Knights form columns in their starShells. At the vanguard, I turn to face the darkening world.
Enemy iron streams down to the western and eastern horizons. Little more than gnats in the shadow of the atomics. Obelisks of radioactive smoke and debris grow upon the Plains of Caduceus. High above their stalks, the bulbous heads of the mushroom clouds disappear into the thickening storm cover. Black clouds ride. Lightning shatters the sky. Atalantia has shattered our jaw with her first punch. Now it’s our turn. I lift my slingBlade.
“For the Republic! For Mars!”
