Between the Son of Albion and the crackling yellow and black expanse that oozed from it and steadily spread across the sky, Mayflight stood in a perpetual state of dusk. “They’ll be here in two minutes,” Edevane said. He glanced cautiously out of the Tirren’s upstairs window. “They’re taking it slowly, probably the only ones left. Everyone in position?”

  “Best as they can,” Erica said. “I’m not sure any of this is going to work.”

  The radio crackled inside Edevane’s helmet, as barely audible as it was through the layers of padding and his damaged ear drums. “They’re here, sir. Six men. Over.”

  “Understood. Keep me informed. Over and out.” Edevane chambered a round. “Just don’t screw up your part and get in my way,” he said as he left.

  “And don’t get shot, by which I mean do get shot.”

  ***

  Six men emerged from the woods, each clad head-to-toe in the familiar matt black armour, and each carrying a wall-killer. As the men moved forward, they separated into groups of two and pushed in a different direction; two towards the Hubert house, two towards Isla’s house, and the final two towards the Tirren household. A crosshair followed the first group up to the steps of the Hubert house, then swung back to focus on the second group of men once the first group got a little too far ahead. One of the soldiers reached for the door handle and, as he did, the gun fired with a wheezing hiss – the man’s head erupted in a shower of red.

  The gun hissed again; this time it was blue, then green and yellow. The man recoiled and pawed at his helmet in confused panic, the second man raised his rifle towards the bedroom window in search of the shooter. An orange paintball exploded across his eyes, and Harry giggled and fell backwards off the window sill. He wasn’t sure what he hit his head on, but it came off worse than his safety helmet. The men ducked into the cover of the doorway and unclasped their helmets. “It’s frigging paint,” one of them muttered incredulously. The second guardsman also had an opinion on the matter, but as his skull collided with his squad mate’s, he forgot what it was, along with the basic concepts of motor function and bladder control. Bosco stepped from the shadows and seized each man by the wrist and dragged them inside, while Bridget followed closely behind him and collected their rifles and helmets.

  “How long do you think it’ll be before they’re missed?” Bosco asked.

  “One can hope a good many minutes,” Rasmus said. “But if they’re as efficient as our uneasy ally, we’ll be lucky if it’s just one. As I understand it, the helmets have speaker-boxes inside that’ll let us know how and when.”

  “At least we have proper weapons now,” Erica said. She struggled to lift the rifle to chest height. “Don’t look at me like that, Mr. Tirren. We won’t use them unless we have to.”

  “Then let’s hope we won’t have to.” Bosco searched the men’s belongings and produced a set of handcuffs from each one. “See,’ he said as he jangled them in front of her. “Nobody had to die.”

  “I wish I shared your optimism, Mr. Tirren.”

  ***

  The sky cracked with thunder and it started to rain, but there were no clouds in the sky. Rain drizzled through the jaundiced wound that spread from the Son of Albion – stinging charcoaled filth poured down in sheets. Where the rain hit Sarah’s dress, the colour bled and ran and created a tie-dye tiger stripe that she wasn’t entirely upset with. She took one of Isla’s neatly folded dresses and held it above her head like a makeshift umbrella, but the colours trickled down into her hair and made her look like she’d been in an explosion at a paint factory. Until roughly about a minute ago, this would have been the last of her immediate worries.

  Fenton collapsed the spyglass and turned to face Sarah. “They’re coming, to the tower, they’re coming right to us. If I knew what I was doing, I would have been locked in a crate still. It feels like this isn’t much of a plan, miss, er, Parnell.”

  “It’s Hubert,” Sarah said. “You may call me Mistress because I quite like the sound of it, and it’s the least you can do. And it’s a good plan, isn’t it, Tobias?” She turned towards the tortoise shell next to her and repeated herself.

  “Oh, um, yes. Um, I think. I don’t really know. I’m not really one for plans myself. I’m very, oh what’s the word? Indecisive. Very indecisive. I think.” Tobias emerged from his shell and slowly waddled to where Sarah was crouched. “Oh, I see them now,” he said, and ducked his head back into his shell. The men approached the silo in single-file, the closest intently focused on the front door, while the one at the rear aimed directly at the roof.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen. I have it here on good authority that you’re trespassing,” came the contradictory voice from behind them. They turned and aimed their weapons towards the source of the voice – there was nobody there. “Here, if you don’t look at your own feet, how do you know where you’re going?” said the rat. He held an umbrella made of sweet wrappers and toothpicks.

  The guardsman nearest to him stepped forward and slowly shook his head in disbelief.

  “Are you seeing this?” he asked.

  “No,” the other one lied. “But if I did, I’d say just boot it.”

  “Hold on, gentlemen. I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking, and forgive my ass-umption, but you’re thinking, ‘Is this here handsome rat trying to distract me?’ The answer being, ‘course I bloody am.” Tobias crashed down onto the furthest man with a crunch. “Well, he buggered that one up,” Johnny lamented. “I better still get paid for this.” He dropped his umbrella and darted into the undergrowth.

  “What are we going to do now?” Sarah asked. She opened the hatch and slid down the ladder. It was Isla’s best work, so she didn’t come away without a complimentary splinter or four. Fenton followed closely behind and muttered a panicked litany of swear words mixed with a collection of affirmations that also contained swear words. Sarah squeaked as he nudged past her at the bottom and took lead on the second ladder.

  “Hurry up and get this thing off me!” the flattened guardsman barked. His armour absorbed most of the impact, but his arms were pinned and he wasn’t going anywhere.

  “What do you think I’m doing?”

  “Nothing, as usual. Hurry up.”

  Fenton crashed into the guardsman, arms around his waist and dragged him to the ground. He let out a congratulatory grunt that was immediately crammed back into his mouth along with an elbow. His helmet creaked and bent slightly, but managed to keep the general theme of being head-shaped well enough. Fenton howled and fell away from the guardsman, who was already back on his feet. He rolled to his back as the man drove his foot into his chest, and watched aimlessly as the guardsman picked up his rifle and casually aimed it at him. The coils illuminated the darkness and added shades of red and orange to the crackling yellow above them.

  Fenton closed his eyes and opened his bladder, not necessarily in that order. The shot scoured a molten furrow through the mud next to him, the heat melted away the paint along the left side of his helmet. Sarah clung bodily to the guardsman’s arm, her arms and legs tightly wrapped around it. He fired again, this time the shot tore a flaming hole through the side of Isla’s house, put several pieces of highly-distressed furniture out of their misery and exited through the other side of the building. The exterior sizzled where the rain hit it, but it wasn’t enough to keep the fire from rapidly consuming the rickety building. “Mad little bitch! She’s actually trying to bite me!”

  Fenton opened his eyes and slowly came to the conclusion that they were exactly where he left them. He lashed out with his leg and planted the heel of his boot into the back of the flailing guardsman’s knee, which twisted out from under him with a disconcertingly loud pop. Sarah flopped face-first into the mud with a dull splat; the rainwater stung unpleasantly, the mud that clung to her face doubly so. Fenton and the guardsman slipped and slid their way around each other in an imperfect circle; the young recruit had gotten the better of the veteran since his fall and scrabbled to lock an arm around his throat. Each time he was sure he had it, the sleek black armour would slip away and the guardsman would continue his desperate baby-crawl towards his fallen weapon.

  Two lights appeared in the sky and spun drunkenly as they consorted, attracted by the blinding flash of the mostly-silent wall-killer and the now incredibly on fire silo. As the conflagration grew brighter, fuelled by pieces of clothing and items of furniture that were glad to be put out of their misery, and the barrel of the rifle faded back into the darkness, a third light appeared, almost but not quite exactly to cue and almost but not quite exactly as bright, as the hefty lantern that sat in the centre of the clearing on an old red wagon shot forth intermittent bursts of light. Now, strictly speaking, the mice had only been asked to turn the light on as soon as something happened; they weren’t, for example, asked to use it to send obscene messages about the men’s mothers in semaphore, though this is exactly what they did do and especially what they would have done anyway had Rasmus possessed the forethought to mention it. After a brief discussion over who loved their mother the most, was most offended by all of this terrible slander, but also which of the two was the largest and most violent, it was decided who would stay behind to investigate the light.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Sarah blinked up at the light as it moved closer to them, though aware but unfazed by the spotlight, the men continued their pushing and shoving race towards the fallen rifle. The swaying of the cradle in the wind and the rapid movement of the men made the pilot’s attempt to draw a bead on Fenton an exercise in futility. A shot rang out, the controls of the cradle fizzed and sparked in the rain where the bullet struck it. The cradle veered and gyrated, then the engine faltered and it tumbled to the ground end-over-end. The pilot fell from the cradle and landed in a dazed heap in the mud, where he watched unflinchingly as the cradle fell towards him. The slippery guardsman inclined his head towards the sudden crunch and caught a forearm along the side of his face. Fenton wrapped his arms around his waist and pulled him to his feet. The veteran twisted his body and brought his elbow back again and again, each connected with the dull thud of armour on sort-of-armour, and though his vision blurred and his legs felt more like pipe-cleaners than they did a moment before, Fenton remained upright. He pulled the guardsman off his feet and brought his arms up and over his shoulder. Fenton collapsed to the ground, his arms still gripped around the veteran, the force of the impact enough to rattle the man’s brain in his skull despite the muddy landing. Neither men moved.

  “Useless,” Edevane muttered to himself. He nudged the unconscious form of the slippery guardsman with his foot. The man stirred slightly and groaned, then he gurgled as Edevane brought his boot down across his throat. He violently flailed his arms at Edevane’s leg as he leant forward and doubled the pressure, then grew still.

  “What are you doing!?” Sarah cried.

  “They’re not your playmates, stupid girl. They want to kill you and take everything from you. Don’t let them.” He kicked Fenton in the arm, the groggy Private rolled over and crawled to his feet. Edevane drew his knife and approached the pinned guardsman; the man had since stopped the attempt at freeing his shattered legs from beneath the cradle, and now stretched desperately towards his rifle, his scrabble only becoming more frantic as Edevane drew closer. Sarah closed her eyes and covered her ears.

  “Did I-, Oh, knackers,” Fenton slurred as he saw the burning silo for the first time. “We need to get out of here.” He took Sarah by the hand and ran towards the Tirren’s cottage. They rounded the corner to a chorus of gunfire; the first shot sizzled past Sarah close enough to bake the stinging mud onto her face and ignite errant strands of hair that fluttered in the wind, the second shot struck Fenton in the chest and lifted him off his feet and slammed him to the ground in an unmoving heap. There was no blood, just the vomitus odour of cauterization that filled Sarah’s nostrils. The contents of her stomach escaped and started a new life on her boots.

  “Get down, idiot,” Edevane growled. Sarah dropped to the ground, a shot singed past her head and impacted the closest guardsman in the throat; he collapsed to the ground, his head landing fashionably later than his body. The remaining guardsman swung his rifle towards Edevane, but he was already moving for cover, as little as that would help him. Sarah looked up at the silhouette of a man, then back towards Edevane as he disappeared into the shadows. She watched in slow-motion as another shot whizzed by her and struck a barrel to the side of the Tirren’s house; it exploded into a shower of wood and flour, the latter of which immediately congealed in the rain and dropped to the ground in a thick white brick. She tried to get back to her feet, but the ground slipped out from below them.

  “Cooie!” A large tin can twirled towards the guardsman, a trail of blue paint streaked behind it like the tail of a comet, and struck him atop the head with a dull clank. He pivoted this way and that, a panicked dance on the spot, to catch even the smallest glimpse of his assailant in his paint-streaked vision. There was nothing and no-one, and with consideration to how the last twenty or so seconds had gone, which he summed up as quite poorly, he decided the relative cover of a doorway was better than nothing, despite being well aware that that’s exactly what it was. He wiped at his goggles with the back of his hand to finish what the rain had started, then reached up to the button on the side of his helmet.

  “Bravo. Do you read me? Where are you? Over. Under heavy fire. What is your position, Bravo? Over.”

  “This is Bravo,” the radio crackled. “Have you tried looking behind you, you silly bugger? Also, I’m sleeping with your wife. Do something about it, eh?” The guardsman turned just as Bosco brought the heavy pipe down along side his head. Erica burst from the house and ran towards Sarah and tried her hardest to not let the still smouldering remains of, what she presumed to be Fenton, distract her. She plucked her sister off the ground and hurried her inside, past Danielle who stood braced in the shadow of the doorway, rifle in hand. She waved the girls inside, then slipped out behind them. Her eyes swept the street as best they could in the darkness and her arms did their best to make sure the gun followed at a reasonable pace, or at all, but she was under no illusions that she probably wouldn’t be able to aim it even if her life depended on it, which let’s face it, it did. Bosco waddled past her with the man slung over his shoulder. Danielle backed into the lobby, gun still raised, and shut the door behind her.

  “I knew I shouldn’t have let you help. Look at the state of you!” Erica tried to keep her tone neutral but failed miserably; her face was flushed and the panic in her voice unmistakable. She steered Sarah into the lounge and sat her down by the fire.

  Geddis put the helmet down and smiled meekly. “Been through the wars, eh? I wish I could have helped more than I have, I’m sorry. I’m glad you’re okay, though. What about that Fenton fella?”

  Erica shook her head. “Try not to think about it for now, Sarah, I’ll go get you a towel.”

  Geddis hobbled to the fireplace and set himself down on the arm of Sarah’s armchair; Bridget scowled at him, but he just shrugged and held up his walking stick. “The only thing we knew about him is that he was a brave lad, Sarah. That’s the best thing anyone could ever remember us for. It’s a big world, he could have run, but he didn’t. He stayed to fight, and that might not mean a lot right now, but it will.”

  “My house!” Isla wailed as she marched through the door and barged past Geddis. “It’s gone. Everything is gone. My dresses, my furniture. Gone.” She flopped down in a sobbing, saturated heap by the fire.

  “We can build you a new house,” Rasmus said. “What’s important is that you’re safe and you weren’t in it.”

  Erica returned with a pile of blankets that she threw over and around Sarah. “Warm up, then go change out of that dress. Remember last time.”

  “So, you’ll be going soon, then? If we can get a cradle, I mean.” Geddis asked.

  “Yes, and I’ve already seen to getting it. How does it work?”

  “Pretty simple, really. There's a flight stick for basic movement and an incremental thruster. If it's one of the newer models, there'll be a recall button somewhere that'll take care of everything.”

  “And if there isn't?”

  “Try not to fly into an engine, I guess.”

  “I have a lot to look forward to. If I don’t get struck by lightning first, I imagine.”

  “About that. I didn’t want to say anything earlier, because you all had enough to worry about. There’s something wrong, probably with the emitter, maybe the Anchor. The ship has taken a battering, so it might even be both. Whatever it is, the Gate isn’t closing, and it isn’t stable. As long as the Albion keeps feeding the Gate power, it’ll continue to get bigger. If we’re lucky, once it runs out of juice, the Gate will just close, and buggered if I know what we’ll do then, but it’s better than the alternative. It’s equally possible, mind, that it’ll be large enough to be a self-sustaining reaction by that point. I don’t mind telling you that we’d be pretty buggered.”

  “Then how do we stop it?”

  “Shutting down the engine would be a good start. You’d be able to shut it down from the control room, but I’ve no idea which terminal you’d have to use. I can’t be there with you, but we’ve got enough helmets to go round. I could maybe talk you through it once you’re there. They’re a bit big for you to wear, but you can press the button on the side and speak into it just fine.”

  Sarah listlessly shuffled around from her seat at the fire. “I should probably stay here,” she conceded. “I can still help over the radio.” She clumsily unfastened her tool belt beneath the jumble of blankets. “You’d better take this with you.”

  “And a big help you’ll be, too. Speaking of help, that reminds me. Where did bugger lugs get to?”

  “Wherever he is.” Erica folded her arms across her chest. “He bloody well better stay there. He left Sarah in the street with one of those psychopaths.” She adjusted the tool belt and kissed Sarah on the forehead; it tasted like mud and sadness. “Right, that’s me, then.”

  “That’s us,” Danielle corrected. “Not letting you go alone, midget.”

  “You’re barely taller than I am.”

  “But I am taller, midget. And we’re doing this together. No arguments.”

  “Thank you,” Erica whispered.

  Geddis shuffled off the end of the chair arm and hobbled over to them, an orderly queue formed behind him. They didn’t quite resort to taking tickets, but jumping places would have certainly been frowned upon. “You take care, eh? Both of you, but especially you, Ostler. Can’t have anything happen to my love interest, now can we?”

  “Oh, cock off, Geddis.” She pulled him close for a hug and straightened a handful of hair.

  “Look at you trying to change me already. Just take care, Danielle. I’m serious.”

  “You, too, Nate. Don’t hurt yourself on the radio.”

  “Mr. Tirren, I’m- We’re going to need help with just one more thing.”

  Bosco pushed himself off the sofa and puffed out his chest. “What are we doing?”

  “We’re going fishing.” Erica grabbed a helmet off the table and made for the back door. Bridget still lay comatose in the armchair, the last few days without sleep had finally caught up with her. Bosco adjusted the blanket, then followed Erica.

  Danielle trailed behind as she hefted one of the wall-killers along with her. “A little help here, Bosco?” she grunted.

  Bosco looked back at the gun. “Hmm. No,” he said, and walked out the door.