Oh, my… “Pull up! Max Four, do you read? Pull up, pull up, pull up!”

The nayaraptors didn’t just fly out of the walls. They exploded, jetting out in a huge, chittering black cloud of spiked tails, needle teeth and razor-sharp claws.

“Cease fire!” McGinnis shouted, plugging one ear with his pinky. “Cease fire!” The screams of the raptors were so shrill they grated like sharp nails squealing over a chalkboard. The hairs along his forearms and down the nape of his neck stood on end. He kept screaming for his people to cease fire because he wasn’t sure anyone heard a damn thing over the din. But the shooting, from his end anyway, diminished to a few scattered pock-pocks of machine gun and a last hiss of laser.

And then he just stood there, mouth hanging open, shoulders slack—because McGinnis had never, ever seen a raptor flock take wing all at once. Hell, it was something that, if you lived on Deneb Algedi, you never hoped to see because if you did… well, you were probably dinner. The nayaraptors soared heavenward, streaming from the rock walls in black gouts like inky water—higher and higher until they found something plenty interesting to capture their attention.

And so, McGinnis thought, would the Dracs.

Picture the soot gray bulb of a paper wasps’ nest, and what happens when you take a stick and knock it to the ground—and then multiply that by a factor of twenty. No, fifty. Make that a hundred fifty gazillion.

Hines had never seen anything like it, not even in nightmares. The air was alive with raptors swarming, coiling, boiling like thunderheads and bawling an unearthly, rasping screech that Hines heard through her helmet and all the way to her toes. Far below, she saw her choppers break off, cutting right and left to avoid the winged reptiles. But choppers were not like aerospace fighters; they didn’t turn on a dime, and they sure as hell couldn’t climb nearly as far or as fast.

Mad Max Four, the lead, was hit first. A raptor screaming straight up, levitating as if pulled to heaven by an unseen hand, slamming into the Balac just as the copter angled hard right, slewing down. Suddenly, there was a spray—no, a fountain of blood and chunks of quivering raptor meat spewing in a halo. The Balac bounced up as its rotors whack-whack-whacked the raptor, hacking off the head before gutting the reptile. A twisting tangle of intestines unraveled like a ball of yarn, and as what remained of the reptile caromed off the copter, the lumbering machine flipped over and fell like a stone.

“No!” Hines watched in horror as the VTOL smashed into a Donar that had angled directly into its path. The copters collided, exploded, showering debris and molten armor as a mushroom cloud of orange and yellow flame blew toward the sun.

Then the air turned electric, sizzling with spurts of laser fire crisscrossing from the remaining four choppers. They tagged a few raptors, scoring flesh from bone and burning troughs into bellies and along backs. But that only seemed to enrage the remaining animals, and they pivoted, screaming their ungodly howls, wreaking ruin.

“Get me down there, get us down!” Hines screamed at her pilot. She felt her stomach bottom out as the pilot pushed the Crow into a steep dive, and Hines fumbled with the pickle, flipping her HUD to targeting mode. The Crow had no missiles, and only one laser—but, by God, she’d be damned if she let this go by, she’d be damned! Crimson spots that resolved into targets, so many she couldn’t count, jumped across her HUD, and she decided what the hell and started shooting.

She got two, and she thought that maybe she’d tagged a third. But then something huge and black wheeled into view on a collision course, filling the windscreen, and her pilot was screaming some awful, nameless horror, and Hines had a split second of life remaining to register this: Deneb Algedi did have a hell, after all.

A painting he’d seen once from way back when, really old—hell, ancient Terra. By a guy named Hieronymus Bosch, and called Descent of the Damned, or something like that; McGinnis wasn’t sure, and it really didn’t matter. Because as he watched a raptor wham into the tail rotor of the remaining Balac, saw the copter begin a horizontal pinwheel around and around as the main rotor twisted the chopper in a corkscrew before it blew itself apart, and as he saw the tiny blue Crow bullet like a meteor, the dance of its laser licking fire over the tangle of raptors and screaming metal, before smashing into a raptor, nose-first—he thought that, yeah, it was just like that: all those lost souls plummeting straight into the yawning mouth of an abyss blacker than a starless night. Not even a Drac deserved an end quite like that.

And what had it been for after all? McGinnis let his breath out, inhaled, tasted the oily, metallic smoke of spent fuel and charred flesh. First the Swordsworn, and now the Dracs. He had no illusions. The Dracs would prevail and Deneb Algedi would fall—maybe not today, or tomorrow, but soon. He’d bought this tiny slice of his world a few days, maybe, and not much more, and he was suddenly very, very tired.

McGinnis keyed his mike. “All right, people,” he said, and then stopped, shocked that his voice shook with something very close to grief. Turning aside, he met the eyes of his driver, read the horror there. McGinnis put a hand on the man’s shoulder and squeezed. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Cylene Nadir Jump Point

Prefecture III, Republic of the Sphere

25 July 3135

All that remained was to give the order. But Katana hesitated. She sensed Crawford and the Old Master, her JumpShip’s tai-sa and the bridge crew waiting on her command—and she couldn’t give it, not yet. Her mouth was dry as a dust bowl; her stomach was in knots; and she was prickly all over with anxiety, about ready to jump out of her skin—all par for the course. All that adrenaline pumping through her veins was there for a reason, as were those inner voices insisting that living to see another day was nice, thank you very much. Similar to what McCain always said about doctoring: Death is an unacceptable side effect.

But was it death she feared? Katana stilled herself, reaching into that portion of her soul that commanded zanshin, watchful alertness. Yes, of course, she wanted to live. Why else would someone fight? No, she was more concerned about the lives she thrust into harm’s way, and the soldiers she considered brothers and sisters under the skin, Sakamoto’s troops.

And Sakamoto? A sigh nearly escaped. Crawford wanted to fight the man; no, that wasn’t true. Crawford wanted Sakamoto dead. Understandable: Crawford had experienced Sakamoto’s brutality.

And because of Sakamoto, Toni’s dead. Tears pricked the back of her eyes, but she would not let them fall, not here. There was a time and place for grief, but this was neither. They would not strike at the warlord. They would try to reason with him.

And if the tai-shu was acting independently, for his own glory? Well, then—she crossed her arms over her chest—that didn’t leave her much choice, did it? Whatever else, that ought to satisfy Crawford’s thirst for revenge and, maybe, hers as well.

But she was not frightened. Because when I know myself, I am one step closer to uwate : mastery of mind and sword, soul and body.

Turning, she met the Old Master’s gaze for a brief, wordless exchange. She wondered if he read the change in her eyes and thought that, likely, he could, though he held his peace as was his wont. Her gaze shifted to the communications officer, a smooth-skinned sho-i with clear, green eyes. “You’re ready to go active as soon as we complete the jump?”