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“And I am the son of Atlas au Raa Sixth shade of the Shadowfall Slayer of Petro au Bretta, the Desert Spear” Bellerephon’s eyes glitter with delight as he gathers phlegm and spits it onto Cassius’s face It drips down Cassius’s cheek, running diagonal with his Peerless Scar “This is a blood feud The blood of randfather and my cousin is upon your hands Hear me now, you wretched worm We are devils to one another In the nale co Place till one heart beats no more”

“Very well, oodhted to accept”

IT SOUNDS LIKE THE DAMN WORLD is ending Clustered outside the downed Gold shuttle in the center of our trap, Volga, Dano, and I look up and feel the fear Two escort ripWings chase after the downed Augustan ship The blast door above us locks closed as the first round of gunfire pelts its reinforced surface

The shuttle pluh the city, draard faster than the speed of gravity by the fleet-grade Sun Industries gravWell The ripped the shuttle as soon as the EMP Kobachi built into the custom drone went off inside the shuttle We almost lost the ship twice on the descent as its rotation ravWell’s projection radius Dano wrangled it back by increasing the gravity to four tirav

Aside froe of rain, seven fliers, a forest of shrubs from balconies, several clotheslines, and three shattered hoverbikers who died by s into the floor at nine hundred kilometers per hour All that haul lies in a broken bone and e of the half-completed Lower West Hyperion Hospital Dano kicks one of the shattered hoverbiker helmets away from the breech we’ve burned into the shuttle’s hatch The head is still inside

My stomach knots up I’m back in the block war

Digging through debris Boots sto fish, lungs starved froen out of the air

I tear my eyes from the disembodied head, thankful for my helmet so my crew doesn’t see ht, afraid that the sto too much

The blast door shudders above us as the escorts pour more munitions into it Soon it will buckle We’ve four minutes before a rapid response team of Hyperion’s counterterrorism Watchmen deploy from the Twelfth Cohort headquarters

Already, there will be ar for some other way into my metal trap

I stare into thedevice burns a hole in the hull Volga, arrade chestplate and helmet, pulls the breecher off and sla ra She tosses the ralobe of her plasoes in next I folloith the O hands If even one of the nasty bastards inside didn’t get knocked flat by the anacene gas, this could turn into a bloodbath

Trigg run through on a Gold’s razor

Men cru like cans to powerHammers

Ozone and burning flesh as the Gold skins my team alive

My hands shake harder