Walter stood in Dornheim's central square, leaning his back against the cooling armor of the Boar. The tank was dead: the left track was a shredded ribbon of iron, and a puddle of dark, thick fluid leaked onto the stones from the ruptured radiator. All around, among sandbags and improvised barricades of overturned wagons, sat the remnants of the city militia. About three dozen people. Exhausted, covered in mud and soot, they stared silently at the sky.
"Captain," one of the militia members rasped, pointing upward with the broken piece of a crossbow. "They're forming a front."
"I see them," Walter said curtly. He pulled away from the tank's armor and walked over to a bulky construct hastily assembled directly over the old city fountain.
Iron called it "Laplace's Sphere." The apparatus was a hybrid: massive copper induction coils ripped from factory generators intertwined with thick cables that ran straight into the sewers, connecting to the main lines of the city's water supply. In the center of this web rested three etheric lenses stripped from the fallen mages during the first days of the siege. The engineer's concept was crude: the shield was meant to catch the kinetic and magical energy of an impact, convert it into thermal energy, and dump it into the water beneath the city.
Walter lowered his hands onto two heavy knife switches.
"Everyone, take cover!" he commanded. "Get down. Open your mouths, cover your ears."
In the heavens, the ship pitched its bow slightly downward. A blindingly white beam of concentrated "True Light" tore from its underbelly.
Walter slammed the switches down.
The square shattered. The air above the fountain instantly densified, taking the shape of a translucent, shimmering dome. The beam struck the apex of the sphere without the sound of an explosion. Instead, an ear-splitting, piercing shriek of tearing space rang out.
The apparatus howled. The copper coils flared cherry-red instantly, changing color from dark yellow to a bright glow. Walter was thrown violently against the control console. Static electricity surged through his wet boots, racking his muscles with spasms. He gripped the frequency adjusters, trying to maintain the balance between the magical pressure from above and the physical resistance of the circuit.
"Hold on, you iron bitch," the captain rasped through gritted teeth.
The air inside the dome began to heat up rapidly. Deep beneath the cobblestones under Walter's feet, the pipes howled dully—the water in the mains was boiling, absorbing the colossal energy dump from the strike.
The beam vanished.
"That was just a sighting shot," he whispered, watching the other four ships begin to align their vectors for a synchronized volley.
Noah walked through the ruins of the weavers' quarter. His right arm, hanging limply along his side, was a piece of dead meat. The skin had split from wrist to shoulder, exposing blackened, torn muscle fibers and shards of bone. Blood no longer flowed—the vessels had run dry, and his regeneration had ground to a halt at a critical baseline, diverting all remaining resources of his body to keep his heart and lungs functioning.
He stopped at a crossroads, leaning his left shoulder against a collapsed brick wall.
Noah's gaze swept over the debris at his feet. Among the broken brick, glass shards, and torn sacks of grain lay a bulky metal cylinder with a pistol grip welded to it. A prototype of a handheld etheric cannon. Darwin had been lugging the thing around but apparently dropped it when the collapse of the Town Hall's main entrance began.
Noah lowered himself slowly onto one knee. With his healthy left hand, he gripped the handle. The cannon weighed about fifteen kilograms. He stood up, propping the heavy barrel against the wall of a ruined house with a low groan to steady his aim.
He raised the barrel to the sky, aiming at the nearest skiff.
His finger pressed the clumsy trigger.
The etheric accumulator inside the gun shrieked briefly, and a glob of plasma erupted from the barrel. The recoil was sharp and uncontrollable. Noah's left shoulder cracked, nearly popping out of its socket, the barrel kicked upward, and he stumbled back, falling onto his back and striking the back of his head against the stones.
The glob of plasma flew several hundred meters and slammed into the invisible shield of the Inquisitorial skiff. A faint sound echoed. The plasma washed over the ship's etheric armor in blue sparks and instantly died out.
"Damn it," he whispered into the void.
Tossing the useless piece of pipe aside, he rolled onto his stomach and, clawing at the debris of the wall with his hand, forced himself to stand.
Iron lay on the floor, leaning his back against the base of a concrete pillar. His face had taken on an earthy, ashen pallor.
Darwin squatted next to him. The apprentice was trembling so violently that he couldn't unravel the bandage in his hands. Elyria lay a short distance away on a pile of militia coats. Her breathing was shallow and uneven.
The heavy iron door creaked open. Noah stepped into the basement.
Darwin flinched and dropped the roll of bandage. Iron slowly lifted his heavy eyelids.
Noah walked over to the nearest empty ammunition crate and sank heavily onto it. His mangled right arm rested on his knees, blood slowly dripping from it onto the concrete floor.
"Elias is dead," Noah said.
Darwin let out a sound like a nervous chuckle that threatened to turn into a sob.
"Dead... so we... held them off?"
"No," Noah raised his eyes to the apprentice. "There are five more ships up there. They are forming battle lines directly over the central square."
Iron slowly turned his head toward the communication terminal built into the wall.
"What's happening on the square?"
"Walter is holding the dome," Noah replied. "That... Laplace's Sphere of yours. They struck once. The dome held. But they're preparing a synchronized volley."
The radio on the wall suddenly clicked, and through the crackle of static, the captain's voice broke through. He was breathing heavily, wheezing as if the air burned his lungs.
"Iron... if you're still alive, listen up." Walter's voice was cut off by coughing. "The third circuit is melting. The induction coils are cracking. The water in the mains has evaporated; I have nowhere left to dump the heat. They're dropping altitude."
"What is the temperature on the regulators?" Iron asked the empty air, knowing Walter couldn't hear him but calculating the situation automatically.
"They're aiming for the generator," the voice from the speaker continued. "If they pierce the shield now, all this copper will detonate. It'll blow away half the square along with us."
Darwin rushed to the radio, grabbing the microphone with trembling hands.
"Walter! Captain! Shut down the rig! Get the people into the basements! You'll burn up out there!"
"If I let go of the switches, the dome will collapse in a second. And they're already locking their beams. I'm holding them. As long as I can."
A loud crack sounded, and the connection cut out.
Iron leaned heavily on his healthy hand against the concrete floor.
"Help me up," he told Darwin.
"What for?" Darwin muttered, staying rooted to the spot. "The dome is about to fall. We won't even make it to the stairs. It's over."
"Help. Me. Up," Iron repeated. "Walter isn't buying us time just so we can sit here and wait."
Darwin swallowed, stood up unsteadily, and offered his shoulder to the engineer. Iron leaned heavily on the boy.
"What are you planning?" Noah asked quietly without raising his head. "There are no weapons left."
"I know," Iron stopped by the massive blast door. He looked at the thick data transfer cable connecting the Heart to the city.
Iron reached for the Heart's service port.
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