35 Just Insane Enough #3
At first, I wanted to scold Darius for bringing Tilly to a war zone unarmed, but Tilly was a war steed. She would not have stood to be left behind. Besides, we could use her now.
“Send her over. She can carry the Emperor,” I replied.
“Roger. She is on her way.”
I shot another Imperial who tried too ambitious an advance, then pulled another pistol.
It was faster to draw fresh weapons than reload, but I was on my last two lancers, only one of which was my size.
We had plenty of shells, but the enemy was pressing closer.
I worried that soon, we’d be down to zeroblades.
“Cut me loose and give me a lancer,” Astrid ordered. I smiled.
“Honor to serve, Emperor,” Pavlov said, undoing the buckles across his chest to release his ruler, then passed her a gunbelt with a holstered lancer and two score magma shells. Astrid knelt, a little wobbly, but she gripped the pistol firmly and sighted down its barrel.
We fled from intersection to intersection in short rushes, keeping ahead of our pursuers, but their numbers began to tell.
The interior walls around us disintegrated under the fire of so many lancers, but lasted long enough to keep us alive.
I could tell we were being herded away from Darius’s rescue force, and knew if we kept going far enough, we’d soon be trapped against the outer hull.
That moment came faster than expected. We reached the end of a particularly long corridor to find a two-meter drop to a wide strip stretching from my toes to a gunmetal wall.
I would have stumbled over the edge had Astrid not caught me.
Before I could thank her, she shoved me off my feet.
A lancer bolt sizzled between the two of us.
Landing prone, I caught sight of Tredesceu as an Imperial shot him in the chest, disintegrating most of the Yezhidian’s torso.
I swore and fired at the Imp, missing her, but driving her back into cover.
Pavlov grabbed the Emperor and pulled her onto the lower landing, providing concealment at least. Lancer bolts chewed up the ferrocrete floor, but I rolled over the lip and fell into relative safety, hoping no high-speed rail cars came whipping around the chamber’s circumference before I could find a safe way off the tracks.
“Where are we?” I asked.
Pavlov pointed to the curving gunmetal wall five meters across the landing from us. “That’s the outer hull.”
An idea lit in my mind. “They shoot through that, they depressurize the station?”
“This portion of it, yes,” Pavlov replied.
“Change of plans. To the hull!” I tried to stand, but Pavlov grabbed my shoulder and yanked me off my feet.
“Do you want to die?” the big demon said.
“If we’re there, they won’t dare shoot or risk killing themselves. They’ll have to come with zeroblades, and we’ll still be able to shoot,” I explained.
Pavlov looked unconvinced, but then Astrid spoke through clenched teeth.
“Are you disobeying my Consort’s order, soldier?”
Pavlov stiffened. “No, Your Majesty.”
“Very well, then. To the hull,” Astrid said.
We crawled on our bellies to keep the two-meter rise between us and any ambitious gunners, two moving, one guarding as we crossed the empty landing to the hull.
A few brave demons tried to rush us, but we burned them down before they could draw a bead on us.
When we reached the wall and stood, I thought we were saved.
The Imperial dissidents milled, lancers pointed floorward as they recognized the danger.
Several guards dropped their lancers to pull out zeroblades, and officers coordinated their soldiers into waves, preparing to charge us, but I wasn’t worried.
They would suffer horribly on the way over.
We could hold out here until rescue arrived.
To underscore my point, I took careful aim and blew the torso out of a warrior who was glaring at me with particular malice, sending the rest scattering into cover.
Just because they couldn’t shoot didn’t mean we would allow them to stand in the open within range.
I heard a beep in my radio, followed by a whistle. It could only come from Tilly. I looked up, and saw her streaking high overhead, rolling over to reach the hull wall and follow it to us. Good old Tilly. Clever girl.
A motion by the lancer-blasted, half-collapsed corridor we’d come down drew my attention.
An Imp had mounted a heavy repeating lancer on a tripod, and was swiveling it around to point to us.
Surely, he won’t shoot at us so close to the outer hull, I thought, but then I saw the demon’s eyes, and I knew that intelligence and common sense were not ruling his actions. He was driven by bloodlust.
I grabbed Astrid by the collar and dropped, pulling her on top of me as the idiot demon fired, blowing a two-meter hole in the station’s side between Pavlov and me.
The air rushed outwards, gale-force winds picking me and Astrid bodily from the floor and drawing us towards the breach. There were no handholds, no way to prevent our egress. I just had time to semi-instinctually scream, “Tilly!” before we were sucked into the ever-black sky of the stratosphere.