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"Drones!" Sevro shouts through the com A cloud of metal rises toward us from a small depot in the canyon wall to the east The Howlers streak after the threat, their guns ripping holes in the air Still, dronefire shreds a squad of flying Obsidians They plunizable We skis now Small towns Resorts Estates Granaries We find ourselves over a lake See our shadows as lightning flashes above, silhouetting us

I see the defensive wall now It falls over the horizon like an iron curtain Ninety kiloe of the canyon, and nearly two hundred e of the shield Lakes and rivers don’t find their terh a thick network of durosteel bars that are strong as a ship’s hull It would take a hundred h those bars

Most cities do not have walls so ea and Corinth are alone in the quality of their fortifications We could have coh the belly of Mars and connect every city with their mines, but I didn’t want to There are tactics I must save And there is an exas I’ve seen the histories They are wild andas the besieger’s resolve never runs dry Once upon a tih direct assault on a capable garrison without the price of Pyrrhic victory So field are and starved defenders into subea is a city of twenty ive a lick ins today? There is no difference between the rule of the Bellona and the rule of the Augustus Coppers and Silvers will care But the Reds, the Browns, the Pinks will just watch another master take the chains

Now they’ll see ships fill the sky Bombs rupture the air And they will huddle in their public tenements and fear facelessof a city has been echoed by the screams of rape, theft, drunken horror Peerless Scarred do not partake in such savagery It is not profitable nor in keeping with their tastes But if one takes a city by force, it is the belief of the Golds that the city and all those therein are now property of the conqueror If you are strong enough, you deserve the spoils So cities to their Obsidian and Gray armies as reward for blood spilled

If I can protect this city of Agea, if I can show them that there is a better breed of ea’s heart Capture it Protect it Be loved by those in it as I’m loved bythe vast defensive wall, fire ripples over steel Like tiny flowers fast blooray wall Two feint assaults are led to uns, sliding sideways as they pump munitions at the wall Return fire from the turrets on the walls causes ’s hand A nod from her stills the terror in me But only just

Grays in combat armor rush forward like sodeath into the defenders It is too much to absorb, like the space battle above, layers upon layers of activity and counter-activity Except this has sound

Mines rip holes in my force Bellona kill squads slip out of the wall a hundred listening Their shields shile banner aainst it, thinking it rabsto the river "We’ll all die against that wall The plan"

Hard to remember Hard to remember all this chaos is a distraction What ht by the Sons If they did it The river slithers under the wall One hundred meters wide, and more deep, it already carries corpses toward the city

I dive into the water Feel the tension as the current slows, then speedsthe chill The Howlers nar is with us and his group of Obsidians Jupiter too, all splashing down under water Mustang is closest h the ift

There A hundred s Reds can do, it’s drill And the Sons spent the night preparing to give us passage into the city My men will think some elite lurcher squad was sent here before the arrates were cut, or how the sensorswere fooled

"Once more unto the breech," I murmur, as if Roque, Victra, or Tactus could hear e is narrow as it curls beneath the wall near the bottom of the riverbed We travel two abreast So I take the best fighter with e My co at the wall

Ragnar and I clear the tunnel together I half expected a Bellona ambush, but none comes The Sons did their job well We wait on the opposite side of the wall, still subed, one hundred meters down at the bottonar andHowlers Fifty more Golds and three times that many Obsidians and Grays

I speak into athered at the bottom of the river "You know your orders"

Sevro bunar salutes with his fist balled and against his heart Jupiter yawns into his co silt at the bottom of the river The seconds tick by My razor is looped about my arm PulseFist in my left hand Feel the thump of my heart and the chill of the pendant on my chest Hear the crackle of chaos outside My Helldiver hands ball My eyes close Sevro sends up a probe to see if the riverbank is safe

I’ates

Mustang is to lower the shield so Roque can send reinforcements and we can take the city in one fell swoop I don’t want her to leave me, but I can trust no one else with the task

Trust I must trust that she will live, trust that her Obsidians will protect her, and that she will protect herself There’s a weight pressing down on my heart, a fear that she will not co into darkness If she dies, she’ll die believing a lie I promise myself I’ll tell her if we survive this She deserves that much