The pod door was jammed and I kicked it three times, it opened halfway and I squeezed through. The heat hit my face like standing over an open furnace. The red sand around the pod was already sticking to my boots. "How hot is it?" I called back through the door.The Emperor pushed through behind me. He looked at the sky, then at his one remaining hand. The skin on the back of it was starting to look wrong, too tight, and too dry. "Hot enough to melt steel," he said. "I can feel it and I haven't felt temperature in forty years.""Great," I said. "The pod?""Dead," he said. "The landing cracked the power cell. We have nothing." I went back to the pod and checked anyway. He was right. The cell was split down the center and the emergency water reserves had ruptured in the crash, the liquid already gone into the sand. The charge rifles were still intact. I took both of them."What's that?" I asked. I pointed at the horizon. A mountain, far out, about thirty kilometers. The peak pulsed wi

The floor split open clean down the center of the chamber, and the two halves went in opposite directions. I grabbed the Emperor's arm and ran for the opening we had come in through, but we didn't make it.The ground went up faster than we could run. The whole surface of the planet was rising, the red sand falling away in sheets below us. I could see the scale of it now, the thing underneath was not continent-sized. It was bigger than that. The horizon was curving wrong as the back of the creature broke through.The fin we had been climbing came out of the sand fully. I was standing on the top edge of it when it cleared the surface and kept going up."Jump!" The Emperor shouted. I jumped and he didn't have anywhere to jump to. He grabbed the nearest scale ridge and held on.[Altitude: increasing rapidly. Atmosphere thinning. Abyssal Wing deployment recommended.]I deployed. The wings came out hard and caught the air. I stopped going up and started moving sideways instead. Below me the

The first volley hit the creature's left flank. I felt it through my hands in the nerve cluster. A series of impacts, small and fast, like someone throwing pebbles at a building. The creature's skin registered them and dismissed them. Its heading didn't change by a single degree."They're firing everything," the Emperor said. He was watching from his scale ridge. "Full broadside from the three lead ships.""I know," I said. "Is it doing anything?""To the creature?" He looked at the flank where the impacts were hitting. "No. To the ships?" He watched a moment. "The lead dreadnought just moved to avoid the creature's forward motion. It didn't move far enough."The dreadnought hit the creature's shoulder and the ship crumpled. It wasn't an explosion, just a structural failure, the hull buckling against a surface that had no interest in stopping. The pieces drifted sideways."That was a class-four dreadnought," the Emperor said. "It cost the Syndicate about thirty years of mining revenu

The slug came straight at my face and I opened my mouth and bit down.The impact snapped my head back and my teeth held. I spat the flattened metal into the water. It was hot. I looked at the Spire's cannon and it was already cycling for a second shot."Stop shooting," I said into the comms. "I just caught your best round with my face.""The network still shows hostile," Jax said. "The automated system is going to keep firing. I can't stop it from here.""Then I'm coming in," I said. "Osric, the defense units are at every entry point," Jax said. "They will engage.""I know," I said. "Tell them to try and not break anything they want back." I swam to the east dock and pulled myself out of the water. Six Drowned units were waiting with their full armor and weapons up. They looked at me the way they look at something the network has told them to kill."Last chance," I said. "Stand down." They moved together, but I moved faster. I went through the first one with my elbow to his chest, fla

"How long?" I asked. "The signal transmitted four seconds," Kael said. "At Syndicate burst speed, that's enough data for a full warp coordinate package." He looked at his screen. "Osric, we need to assume they're already moving.""How long for a fleet to arrive from Andromeda?" I asked. "At standard warp?" Kael said. "Weeks. But the Syndicate uses folded transit. Point to point." He paused. "Hours. Maybe less.""Then we have hours," I said. "Maybe less," he said again.I looked at the cracked jar. The fluid was still leaking but Sora had a sealant pack on it already, working the crack from the outside. The Emperor's eye was open. He was still alive. He was watching me."How many ships?" I asked him "Everything they have left," he said. His voice through the speaker was quieter now, the fluid level dropping slightly. "The full Andromeda deployment. They won't send another scout fleet. After what you did to the Shadow Fleet and the blockade, they'll send the main force.""Give me a num