Iron Empire

Seventy: Massacre

After a moment of catching our breath, Dan, Draco, Alyx and I gathered ourselves and jogged into the cockpit where Lucas sat, fingers dancing across the controls.

"Strap the hell in!" he bellowed. Everyone scrambled to get to their seats.

"No!" Lucas glared, gesturing at Draco, "not you. Zip-tie yourself to that seat or you'd better hope you can fly!"

Draco frowned, but did as he was told, taking a new pair of the plastic ties from Lucas' outstretched hand and latching himself to a seat.

The dropship leapt into the air, soaring away from the battle.

"We're here to grab you when you need it, Kedrick," Lucas stated.

Our forces, sensing this was a losing battle, had begun to retreat. Around us, the Zephyrus swarmed in unison, moving as if at the will of some invisible puppet master. Instead of shooting down the mechs as they were picked up, we watched in horror as they began to fly directly into the path of dropships, bringing them down.

"The hell?" Draco screamed. "This is suicide! This is a massacre! These can't be my soldiers! This is not Axion!"

"Clearly you weren't present in Stalnoy," Alyx shot back.

Draco looked ill.

Lucas swung the dropship into a wide arc, activating the ship's camouflage. We were temporarily safe, but a Zephyrus could still hit us by accident.

Kedrick's voice was loud over the comms.

"Guys? I don't think I can make it to Mallet."

I turned, staring out the dropship's window in horror. I could see the Exodus through one of the tower's expansive holes, standing at the edge of a broken platform.

Kedrick was surrounded, boxed in on so sides by approaching Zephyrus, and the Firmament was beginning to shift in place as its remaining undersea tethers strained.

"No, no, no," I demanded, "you'll be fine."

I turned to Dan.

"Is there any way I could find a working mech or something?"

Dan narrowed his eyes, thinking. "I don't..." he began, but stopped. He sighed. "I don't know."

The dropship swerved, buffeted by air as a Zephyrus just barely missed colliding with us. The sound of tearing metal told me that we had gotten extremely lucky.

"It's getting pretty dicey up here, Quinn!" Lucas called. "We just lost power to the hangar bay doors!"

"We have to do something," Alyx shouted, "or we'll all be killed!"

I searched frantically around the dropship.

"Anyone?" I asked, desperately. "Does anyone have an idea?"

"I do," Kedrick remarked, "but you aren't going to like it." Everyone fell silent. "Run," Kedrick directed. "We can't win this. I can't win this. But if you survive, we have a chance. We've already proven Axion's guilt. Now we just need to survive and regroup."

"Like hell we do!" Alyx exclaimed, beating me to the punch. "We'll fly in and grab your mech!"

"I hate to break it to you," Lucas replied, "but without power to our hangar, that can't happen."

"If you take your dropship out of stealth mode you'll be hunted down," Kedrick agreed. "Run, guys. There's no victory if nobody is left to fight."

"He's right," Draco exclaimed, "we have to go before one of those Zephyrus hits us!"