Iron Empire

Sixty-Eight: Failsafe

"I see our way out!" Dan shouted. He had dropped his crutch for speed and now leaned on Lucas for support.

Dan gestured towards the far left side of the hangar floor—falling debris had split the ground apart, but had left one of the service catwalks relatively unharmed. The stainless steel walkway still spanned the entire platform, uniting the two broken halves.

Across the chasm, Dropship 13 sat, undamaged, atop its landing platform, mechs still inside. Many of the people we'd been celebrating with minutes prior were boarding nearby dropships, escaping the destruction.

We raced across the hangar, clamouring up the ladder and onto the catwalk. Far below our feet, the Firmament's ocean trench roiled as debris filled the water.

"We'll go first," Lucas declared. "Once I reach the dropship I can get us in the air in one minute flat."

Lucas, unaffected by heights, helped his brother across the catwalk. The moment they were across safely I moved to follow them but was stopped by a hand on my shoulder.

"We have to defend the Firmament!" Kedrick shouted. "We have to fight! There's no way that we can just leave this all behind!"

"We don't have a choice!" I replied. "There are no mechs left to use!'

Kedrick seemed to make a decision in that moment.

"We have one!" he replied. He took off across the bridge, sprinting aboard the dropship.

"Let's go!" Alyx shouted. "Jackson, Draco, come on!"

Draco seemed to snap out of a trance, turning away from the Zephyrus. Together the three of us began to cross the catwalk, heading for the dropship, which had begun to hover over its landing platform.

A great tearing, screeching sound made me wince, and I turned, just in time to see Andros' Zephyrus force its way into the hangar through the hole its rockets had created.

The interior of the Firmament was vast, but the Zephyrus' wingspan was dangerously large. The mech's matte black armour matched the soot that filled the air, and the shriek of its engines was almost deafening in the enclosed space.

The mech seemed to hover for a moment, uncertain, before its legs extended and it began to descend towards the platform.

"Blast it," Alyx hissed.

"Take off!" I shouted, waving at the dropship. "Take off, it's about to—"

With a terrible screech of metal, the hangar catwalk was torn apart by the slightest accidental touch of the Zephyrus' wing.

The vulture-esque mech scraped at the ground for footing, but toppled backwards, recovering as it soared back out through the hole in which it had entered.

We were safe for now, but the damage had been done.

Dropship 13 lifted off just as its landing platform collapsed, dropping a few meters before its engines caught it.

"Get the dropship out of here!" I shouted. "We'll meet you on the top level!"

Lucas didn't say a word, but the dropship took off, zipping past the spot where the Zephyrus had fallen and out through the gaping hole in the Firmament's side.

I turned to Alyx and Draco.

"We need to get off this bridge!"

Alyx stared at something behind me.

"I don't think that's going to be a problem."

"Where are you going to run now, Fisk?" Andros snarled. The Zephyrus burst back through the hole in the side of the tower, three storeys of firepower. The mech's gargantuan wing missed us by inches as it whipped by like the blade of a giant's sword.