“Stop!” he shouts, voice nearly lost in the chaos. “Do not fire! This is a diplomatic meeting!
Identify yourselves!” We’ve stumbled into the middle of some negotiation, I realize. A surrender of Mustang’s forces? An alliance? Noticeably absent is the Jackal. Is Quicksilver betraying him? He must be. So must the Sovereign. That’s why this place is so deserted. No servants, minimum security.
Quicksilver wanted only men he trusted at this meeting held so close under his ally’s nose.
My stomach lurches as I realize the rest of the room must think we’re Boneriders. Which means they think we’re here to kill them, and this is going to end only one way.
“On the bloodydamn ground!” Victra bellows.
“What do we do?” Pebble asks over the com. “Reaper?”
“I claim the Bellona,” Sevro says.
“Use stun weapons!” I say. “It’s Mustang—”
“Won’t do shit against that armor,” Sevro interrupts. “If they lift their weapons, kill the pricks. Full pulse charges. I’m not risking any of our family.”
“Sevro, listen to me. We need to talk to—” My words cut short because he uses the master command built into his helmet to jam my com output signal. I can hear them, but they can’t hear me. I
curse futilely at him.
“Bellona, stop moving!” Clown shouts. “I said stop.”
Opposite Mustang, Cassius silently drifts through the Silvers, using them as cover to close the gap between us. He’s only ten meters away. Getting closer. I sense Victra tensing beside me, hungry to be let loose on one of the men who she blames for her mother ’s death, but there’s civilians between us and the Golds, and Quicksilver ’s a prize we can’t afford to lose.
My eyes judge the plump cheeks of the Silvers and Coppers. Not a soul here is oppressed. Not a belly here has ever been hungry. These are collaborators. Sevro would scalp them one by one if given a rusty knife and a few idle hours.
“Reaper…” Ragnar says quietly, looking to me for instruction.
“Take your hand away from the razor!” Victra shouts at Cassius. He stays quiet. Coming forward, certain as a glacier. Moira and the Death Knight follow after him. Kavax’s helmet is slithering up to cover his head. Mustang’s face is already covered. Her pulseFist active and pointed at the ground.
I know death well enough to hear it gather its breath.
I activate my external speakers. “Kavax, Mustang, stop. It’s me. It’s—”
“Stop moving, you piece of shit!” Victra snarls. Cassius smiles pleasantly and he lunges forward.
Ragnar makes a weird twisting movement to my left, and one of the two razors he carries flies through the air and skewers the Death Knight through his forehead. The Silvers gape at the famous
Olympic Knight teetering to the ground.
“KAVAX AU TELEMANUS,” Kavax roars and rushes forward with Daxo. Mustang breaks
sideways. Moira charges, lifting her pulseFist.
“Waste ’em,” Sevro says with a snarl.
The room erupts. Air torn to shreds by superheated particles as the Howlers open fire at point-blank range into the crowded room. Marble turns to dust. Chairs melt into gnarled chunks of metal
and kick across the floor. Meat and bone explode, filling the air with red mist, as Silvers and Coppers are caught in the crossfire. Sevro misses Cassius, who dives behind a pillar. Kavax is shot a dozen times, but he doesn’t falter even as his shields overheat. He’s going to smash into Sevro and Victra with his razor when Ragnar charges from the side and hits the smaller man so hard with his shoulder that Kavax is lifted clean off his feet. Daxo attacks Ragnar from behind, and three giants tumble to the side of the room, crushing two scrabbling Coppers half their size as they go. The Coppers scream on the ground, legs shattered.
Behind Kavax, Mustang takes two shots to the chest, but her pulseShield holds. She stumbles, fires back at us, hitting Pebble in her thigh. Pebble’s lifted backward and flipped into the wall, leg shattered from the blast. She screams and clutches at it. Clown and Victra cover her, firing back at Mustang, dragging Pebble behind a pillar. Screwface and four other Howlers who guarded the door and kept
Matteo outside now fire into the room from the hallway.
I stumble sideways, lost in the chaos, as the marble where I stood shatters. Silvers scramble under the table. Others kick away from their chairs, racing for the imagined safety of the columns on the fringes of the room. Hypersonic pulsefire rips between them, over their heads, through them.
Buckling the columns. Quicksilver runs behind two Coppers, using them as human shields when shrapnel rips into them, and they all tumble down in a mess of limbs and blood.