Captain Southunder calmly drew his .45 auto, centered the front sight on the screeching beast, and blew its head off. The operator was splashed with sizzling ink, but better that than being rent by their razor claws. The creatures were only the size of small dogs, but they had certainly made a mess of his fine new airship.
“Losing altitude fast,” Barns said, having ignored the gunshot. “I’ll do what I can.”
“Very well, Mr. Barns.” Southunder went over to the nearest phone, spun the charger a few times, and picked it up. “Cargo hold. Mr. Schirmer, are you there?”
“Schirmer was attacked by a demon. He cannot come to the phone right now.”
“Ori. Listen, we’re in trouble. I need you to keep us from going up in a ball of fire. We’ll be in range of the entire Imperium navy in a few minutes.”
“Yes, Captain. I will not let us burn.”
Southunder glanced out the front window. They were out of the unnatural night and back in the blue skies he knew so well, and that meant he could fiddle with the weather. “I might be able to get us out of this, but it’s going to get choppy. Have the eggheads aim that device back at Shanghai. Let’s give Mr. Sullivan our full support. I have a sneaky feeling he needs it.”
“Covering,” Sullivan shouted as he fired the BAR through the doorway.
“Moving!” Toru charged forward through a wall, plowing into the soldiers on the other side. The war club rose and fell, and two more died. Toru picked up a submachine gun in the other hand. “Covering.” And he opened fire into the next room.
Sullivan rushed past Toru and took up a position behind a marble pillar. “Reloading.” He dropped the spent mag and pulled another from his chest. His magic was overheated and exhausted. He hadn’t pushed this hard since the Second Somme.
Hundreds of troops had converged on the mansion. It was falling apart around them. Bullets were competing to fill every free bit of air space. Iron Guards were everywhere. Sullivan had been shot so damned many times he couldn’t even keep track. The Spiker armor was being pulverized and picked apart by the sheer volume of impacts. He was bleeding from an unknown number of cuts, punctures, and burns, and his Healing spells were barely keeping up.
Toru wasn’t faring much better. His fancy samurai armor was missing a horn, and one big impact from a recoilless rifle had nearly put him through the foundations. He was limping and leaving a blood trail behind them. “Where is Saito?”
Sullivan pulled the bolt back on the BAR. “Lost him.”
“The coward has fled!” Furious, Toru kicked a couch across the room.
The wall next to Toru exploded and a gleaming metal man appeared. It slammed a fist into Toru’s side and launched him into a marble pillar so hard it cracked. Sullivan shot it, but the bullets bounced off the gakutensuko. It was far sleeker and more humanoid than the American versions. It raised an arm, and bullets ricocheted off Sullivan. The two kept firing into each other, and then stopped when they fell empty at the same time. They charged and collided, and the metal man knocked Sullivan through the ceiling.
He was in a bathroom. “Son of a bitch.” He rolled over, saw the machine man walking beneath him through the hole in the floor, and swore again. His Power was already rebuilding in his chest. Sullivan got up, found the cast-iron bathtub, made it weigh nothing, ripped it out of the floor, took it back to the hole, aimed it, and then quadrupled its weight. The tub fell, smashing the mechanical man in the head. Sparks flew. Then Toru appeared and hit the gakutensuko with the tetsubo so hard that gears flew like confetti.
Sullivan jumped through the hole and landed next to Toru. He lurched when he hit the ground, realizing that at least one of the mechanical man’s bullets had made it through the armor and embedded itself in his stomach. “Reloading,” he said again.
There was a huge crowd of Iron Guard coming up the front entrance. They were moving cautiously now, covering each other with firearms and magic. Sullivan moved to the opposite side of the room to see if there was any potential escape, but as soon as he neared the window he started taking machine gun fire. Something big and silver moved in the yard. The second robot tracked him through the wall, and much like Toru had said earlier, it really was accurate, as more bullets struck his armor.
He moved behind a shelf, and for the first time Sullivan realized they’d been pinned down in a library. He marveled at the stacks, which stretched to the ceiling. It was a rather nice collection.
Well, that was certainly an appropriate place for him to die.
He came around the corner shooting, dropping another two soldiers and injuring a third. A Fade came through the wall, grabbed onto his arm, and tried to sink them both into the floor. Sullivan surged his Power hard, making himself as dense as when he’d fallen from the sky, and the Fade was simply unable to muster enough Power to drag them into the ground. The second he reformed, Toru smote the ninja’s head from his shoulders with the club.
It felt like the entire Iron Guard collectively opened fire. Bullets tore through everything. Books ignited under the intense heat. Lightning arced through the doorways and tracked up the electrical outlets, and the overhead lighting exploded in a shower of sparks. Sullivan was hit at least another dozen times. Another bullet pierced his side, and he winced as breathing filled his lungs with fire. “Son of a bitch.” Another pierced the armor of his leg and ripped through his calf. He crashed into a shelf and fell to the floor.
Toru lurched to the side as a heavy round struck him in the helmet. It was an incendiary, and it was still glowing like a coal. It sizzled as it burned his forehead. Toru wrenched the damaged helmet off and threw it away. “Curse you dogs!” And then he had to rub the fire out of his hair.
The noise tapered off as the Iron Guard reloaded or let their Power recollect.
He didn’t know what was going on around them, but there was a terrible racket outside. Entire buildings were falling down and there was Power humming through the air like he’d never felt before. But he knew hundreds of troops were converging on the mansion.
“We are surrounded,” Toru stated with grim finality.
Sullivan pulled another mag for the BAR. The origami duck fell from the mag pouch and landed on the floor in a puddle of blood. Sullivan studied it for a moment, picked it up, and then went back to reloading his rifle. “I’m not the surrendering type.”
“Agreed. I would rather die looking a fellow warrior in the eye than wait in here and be executed like a fish in a bucket.”
“It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. You don’t execute fish.”
“Very well, Sullivan. We will die with honor. I leave this world with only two regrets. First, that we did not manage to kill the traitor, but we can die knowing that his infiltrators have been exposed.”
“I’m sure your father would be proud,” Sullivan said, and he wasn’t mocking Toru in the least when he said that. “What’s the other?”
Toru turned and looked him in the eye. “Now I really am curious to see who would have proven the better warrior between us…” He lurched over and offered his bloody hand to Sullivan. “Come, we finish this… brother.”
Hell, why not? He’d already had one Iron Guard for a brother. Sullivan took the bloody hand. He winced in pain as Toru helped him stand.
There was a commotion among the Iron Guard. Something was going on at the mansion’s entrance. Sullivan risked a look around the corner.
It was the imposter.
He was torn, battered, burned, bleeding. His uniform hung in tatters, but he was not running. Somehow, Sullivan understood. Saito was no longer in charge. This was the Pathfinder, and it was done running. It had been exposed, and its war had begun. It was coming to kill them, and then it would kill every Iron Guard, and then it would consume the whole city.