"If you drown down here in this freezing soup, Ethan Vance, I swear I am going to pull your ghost out of the dark just to throttle you myself!" Evelyn screamed, her voice cracking over the comm-link as the second explosion blew out the remaining stone pillars of the upper grotto."Save your breath, Evelyn, I am planning on living at least another ten minutes!" Ethan yelled back, coughing up a mouthful of bitter, oil-slicked seawater as he fought to keep his footing against the rushing current.The grotto was gone. In its place was a churning, subterranean basin of black water and shattered stone, swallowed entirely by the invading sea. Through the jagged breach in the northern wall, the massive hull of an imperial submersible loomed like a submerged leviathan, its glaring searchlights cutting through the thick, churning silt."They are flooding the lower tunnels to flush us out," Vaelen shouted, swimming hard against the current to grab Ethan by

"If we pull back another ten feet, we are going to be fighting for space inside a mass grave, so find your courage or find a weapon because we are not yielding another inch of this ice!" Evelyn screamed, her voice tearing through the freezing wind as a plasma round detonated just yards away, showering her and the remaining defenders in razor-sharp shards of frozen slush."Evelyn, the northern barricade just collapsed, the imperial marines are through the wire!" Thorne yelled back, dragging a bleeding soldier behind the scant protection of a flipped snow-cat while his rifle smoked from continuous, desperate firing."Fall back to the secondary trench line, do not let them reach the civilian tunnel!" Evelyn ordered, her eyes blazing with a fierce, desperate fury that defied the blood dripping from a gash across her temple."There are too many of them, Commander, our ammunition is gone and half the camp is wounded!" another soldier cried out, droppin

"If you pull that trigger before I finish speaking, Miller, you are just murdering a terrified kid to make yourself feel better about our dead friends!" Lira shrieked, throwing herself directly between the raised rifle barrel and a shaking, cornered refugee against the cold stone wall."Get out of my way, Lira, because I found these exact transmission codes hidden in his personal pack, and that means he is the rat who invited the imperial fleet right into our camp!" Miller roared back, his face purple with rage, his finger trembling violently against the hair-trigger of his rifle."I did not send anything, I swear to you, I swear on my mother's grave!" the young refugee sobbed, pressing his back so hard against the jagged rock that his skin scraped raw. " someone planted that pack in my tent while I was helping carry the wounded, you have to believe me!""Everybody shut your mouths right now or I will put a bullet through the lot of you and let t

"If anyone thinks we are walking out of this camp alive by playing nice, look at the smoking crater where our front gate used to be!" Lira shrieked, firing her rifle until the barrel smoked white-hot and showered the frozen ground with sparks."Stop shouting and keep your head down, Lira, because they are not here to negotiate terms!" Evelyn yelled back, grabbing the younger woman by the tactical vest and jerking her hard behind the shattered remains of a supply crate just as a concentrated beam of plasma scorched the air where she had been standing a second before.The command courtyard turned into a slaughterhouse of deafening noise and blinding flashes of crimson light. Malakar's elite inquisitors moved through the snow like cold, mechanical ghosts, their heavy armor absorbing incoming fire while their particle rifles systematically tore through the camp defenses."Ethan, they are breaking through the secondary barricade!" Thorne shouted over

"If you do not pull your head back right this second, Malakar is going to turn your nose into modern art!" Umbra screamed inside Ethan's skull as the consecrated holy blade sheared through the frost-thickened air with a deafening screech of displaced wind.Ethan jerked backward just as the massive sword plunged through the ice ceiling, missing his cheek by a fraction of an inch and burying its glowing tip deep into the stone floor right between his boots."He knows we are down here!" Evelyn yelled, shielding little Maya with her own body as a shower of jagged ice shards rained down from the ceiling like a volley of silver daggers."Then let us give him a proper exit to look at!" Ethan snarled, his eyes flashing with a volatile, violet void energy as he gripped the handle of the holy blade still wedged in the floor."Ethan, what are you doing, do not touch that consecrated steel, it will burn your hands to ash!" Evelyn cried out, her voic