Once aboard, they would be well protected, which was why the last kilometer seemed to take forever. At the base of the ship, a squad of Davion Guards in winged Kage battle armor covered their approach. The car slid to a stop, and the troops surrounded the door. Paxton pushed Aaron and Deena out of the car and into the protective circle, then into the elevator that lifted them into the belly of the ship.

The driver of the car, one of Paxton’s men, followed, climbing into the lift with them. The car was abandoned on the vast concrete blast-deflector beneath the ship’s immense fusion thrusters. That made Aaron grin. The car had been provided for them by the New Canton government. Knowing it would be blasted into wreckage didn’t do much to balance the scales, but it made him feel better.

He lost sight of the car as the lift ascended into the ship and continued up another forty meters. It passed through the smaller ’Mech bay where his personal gold-and-white Black Hawk was stored. It quickly passed through the roof of the bay and stopped on the crew deck above. Paxton pushed them out of the car and into a nearby emergency crash-couch. There would be no time to get to the Duke’s quarters.

Paxton didn’t seat himself. He simply locked his legs, feet apart, and held onto an overhead support with one muscular arm. He lifted his other arm and barked into his sleeve. “The Duke is secure.”

The captain’s answering voice came from an overhead speaker, as well as Paxton’s hidden earphone. “Davion Guards are aboard and secure. Hatches sealed. Core preheat cycle is complete. Ready to lift off.”

“Lift off,” said Paxton.

The deck under their feet shuddered and began to vibrate. There was the whine of turbo-pumps spooling up, followed by a rumble, like a vast waterfall, then a clap of thunder as the huge engines reached temperatures as hot as hellfire. Plasma erupted from the engine bells, and the huge craft began to move.

Aaron wondered about the car. Did it melt? Was it vaporized? Pulverized? Or just tossed away like a leaf in a gale? He wished he could have seen it.

Acceleration pushed them gently into their seats as the ship lifted off. Paxton’s knees flexed slightly with the G-forces, and he seemed intently focused on the sounds of the launch.

The engines dulled to a roar as they gained altitude, the sound no longer echoing back from the ground to pound against their armored hull. After a few seconds, the deck groaned again, then shuddered as the landing legs retracted into the ship’s lower skirt.

Thirty meters below them and fifty meters over in the direction of the number two landing leg, an accelerometer in the detonator of Clete Wyoming’s “retirement-fund” triggered a solid-state relay. A timer began, its settings based on the typical launch profile of a Union–class DropShip and the designated departure pattern of the Capital Spaceport.

The ship climbed out at 1.5 gravities, moving eastward over the snow-white dunes of the shoreline and the Gulf of Emeralds beyond. By now, its course would have taken it five kilometers out to sea, to an altitude of six thousand feet.

That was far enough. That was high enough.

It would be a darned shame about the fish, though.

The bomb exploded.

The explosion tossed Aaron painfully against his harness. The whole compartment seemed to buckle around them, decking and bulkheads rippling like cardboard.

Paxton was tossed off his feet and, for a moment, hung by his hands from the overhead support. Aaron watched with horror as the angle of Paxton’s body shifted dramatically, a human plumb bob defining a “down” that changed moment by moment.

It was like being in a building that was slowly falling over on its side.

There was another explosion, louder than the first, and something ripped through their compartment. Aaron looked over to see the car driver slump over in his seat. His upper harness was severed by a wrist-thick shaft of steel that had been driven through the back of his seat and straight through his chest. Aaron watched the light of life fade from his eyes, his expression not one of pain or fear, but surprise.

Aaron felt …nothing. Or perhaps a perverse kind of relief, releasing the tension that had been building since his confrontation with Sebhat back at the palace. There was no more waiting. Now what happened would happen.

“All hands to crash stations,” the captain’s voice came, muted, from down the corridor, the speaker over their head having been silenced. “We’ve lost the turbopumps on the number six thruster. Number five has shut down from secondary damage!”

The sound of the motors changed. Aaron’s stomach lurched as though he were in a falling elevator.

“Shutting down two and three to balance thrust!” The falling slowed, and the floor seemed to pitch back toward level.

Aaron barely was aware, lost in a fugue state. It was the same feeling he’d had when he committed himself to battle, when the cockpit of his ’Mech sealed and the warrior took over for the diplomat.

He saw Deena’s face, white with fear. He’d seen her confront mortal danger before without flinching, but the circumstances had been different, more under her control. This was different.

He smiled at her. How could he make her understand? In danger there was clarity. These were the moments when one was most alive, facing death, fighting fate for every moment of life.

He glanced over at Paxton, thinking he at least would understand, but Paxton was looking around like a caged animal. This was not the kind of threat he could fight. He could protect his Duke against bullets, but not gravity. He looked like a man who had just realized he was about to fail.

Deena looked at Paxton desperately. “Escape pods?”

Aaron answered for him. “They’re unreliable in the atmosphere, and we’re not going up anymore. Lifeboats would work, but a Union doesn’t carry any.”

“Can we land?”

The captain’s voice came from the speaker again, sounding almost as desperate as Deena’s, as defeated as Paxton’s expression. “Number two landing leg is jammed. Negative deployment on two. We’re going to come down hard.”

Paxton looked at Deena and shook his head sadly.

Aaron blinked and looked at the elevator, which now stood with doors ajar. The elevator car was visible, jammed halfway down to the lower deck. Next to it was an open shaft with a ladder in it. He reached up to his chest and twisted the buckle to release his harness. “If you want to live,” he said, “follow me.”

He ran to the shaft, glanced in to make sure it was clear, then started climbing down as fast as he could. He looked up to see Deena, then Paxton, following him. He counted steps and calculated. Forty meters give or take. Maybe two rungs per meter.

Half a dozen steps and they emerged through the roof of the ’Mech bay. The far end of the bay was a shambles, the bulkhead blasted open to expose twisted metal trusses that were probably part of the crippled landing leg. The farthest ’Mech was twisted and melted almost beyond recognition. The next, a Centurion, was heavily damaged, a ceiling crane having fallen and wrapped itself around the ’Mech’s shoulders.

But the two ’Mechs on their end were intact, including his Black Hawk.

He glanced down. Just below them, the ladder passed through a maintenance catwalk and ran next to the Black Hawk at shoulder height. Good. They wouldn’t have to go all the way to the bay floor and climb back up.

He dropped to the grating of the catwalk. He smelled hot metal and burning plastic. A stream of smoke came from somewhere in the wreckage and whistled out through a breach in the bay door. He reached up to help Deena down as Paxton dropped the last two meters and landed lightly on his feet.