35 Just Insane Enough #2
We needed no map to direct us to the Royal Darius.
The fan of dark, burning destruction emanating from the rightmost docking ring formed an arrow showing the route of our escape.
Lancer bolts flashed, blasting craters in the subdivision walls, and strange arcs of fire sprayed out, igniting everything they touched with a sickly blue flame.
The warning lights in this main chamber flashed crimson.
Despite the water streaming from above like rain and the local fire-suppression foam, the flames continued to spread.
“Mother Earth, is he using chemical throwers?” Pavlov breathed.
“We learned from you,” Tredesceu said, his voice barely above a whisper.
Pavlov’s pupils were wide, drinking in the spectacle as we descended towards the central pyramid. “I wasn’t scolding. I’m impressed he would be so brutal.”
Having been subjected to chemical thrower attack, I suppressed the urge to gulp, ignored the instinctive desire to pull up my chem-repellent cloak to save me from the deadly spray of acid, poison, liquid fire, or whatever new horror the Empire had dreamt up for us this week.
“That’s unreasonably dangerous aboard a station like this,” I said. “He could overload the atmosphere scrubbers, if he doesn’t burn through the bloody hull first.”
Pavlov shook his head. “Hull’s too thick for jellied fire. You’d need a lancer to blast through.”
Our view of the ongoing assault was cut off as the central pyramid’s peak rose up to contain us. The gravitic compensators whined as the turbolift slowed, and I checked on Astrid, hoping to see her stirring towards wakefulness. To my dismay, she remained comatose.
I brandished a heavy Imperial lancer carbine as we exited the lift, with several spare pistols strapped to my harness.
I needn’t have bothered – there were no armed soldiers waiting for us, only a few surprised cadets scrambling for weapons and ammunition belts in an interior armory, half of them still chewing their abandoned lunch as they girded themselves for battle.
We hurried past them, firing a few wild shots to force them under cover, gaining precious seconds before they began calling in alarm.
One tried to rush us, but despite being fully eleven feet tall and a demon to boot, he was no match against a human with a zeroblade.
Tredesceu left him bleeding to death behind us.
My helmet radio crackled the moment we left the enclosed corridor into the central chamber, and Darius’s voice spoke. “Captain, where are you?”
“We’ve just exited the central pyramid and are heading your way, over,” I said, moving at a trot, my oversized carbine cradled in my arms.
“Roger. Moving to intercept.”
Astrid groaned, and Pavlov stopped. I told him to keep moving, but fell back to watch her. Her eyes fluttered, then squinted awake, her head lolling drunkenly from side to side as Pavlov carried her between a pair of two-story sub-structures.
“Astrid?” I asked.
“Levar? What’s going on?” she blearily asked.
“No time to explain in full, so let me sum up. There was a coup. You were captured and taken to a command center floating above the palace, and we’re rescuing you. Let me know when you can walk or hold a lancer.”
Astrid put a hand to her head. “I don’t understand. My head hurts. Everything’s cloudy.”
“I know, darling, that’s the drugs they used to knock you out.
It’s just a bad trip,” I said, using the words I had spoken to her after a bad rave back at the Academy where I held her hair and rubbed her back as she vomited half the night through.
“Just listen to my voice and fight through it. It will pass.”
It was at that moment we began to take lancer fire.
Bolts arced down at us from a nearby ziggurat, blowing half-meter wide holes in the ferrocrete floor.
Tredesceu and Pavlov returned fire, Pavlov unloading both carbine barrels before reaching for more shells, while Tredesceu simply dropped his.
I saved my shot, waiting for a target to appear.
A head popped into view, and I fired at the wall below it.
The head disappeared, and I could see the corpse of the demon I’d killed in the hole I’d blown through the balcony barrier.
“Boylan, we heard gunshots. Where are you?” Darius demanded over the radio.
“We’re in an access lane outside the common area,” I replied, ducking into cover as another group of armed demons emerged ahead of us.
“Are you still on the move?” Darius asked.
I popped up and fired my carbine, then I dropped the empty oversized weapon and drew my two pistols.
“Negative. We’re cut off…” A bolt missed my face by centimeters.
I turned to the side and shot the Imp who had aimed at me down a floorside corridor, then scuttled around a ziggurat corner to avoid shots from his friends.
“And pinned down. A dramatic rescue would be welcome right about now.”
“We’re on our way, but we’ve encountered resistance,” Darius explained. “Tilly’s here. She wants to come to you.”