The Blackhawk wreck smoked. The last remaining rotor blade twitched in a slow and horrible arc, smacking against the floor with every rotation. Its tail sheared off during the crash. It had strewn across the corridor floor like the bones of some great dead bird. Sparks sputtered from the broken console in front of Rick’s unconscious body who still held onto the yoke.

  Beau dragged himself from the side hatch, boots scraping on melted plastic. The heat warped everything. He could barely breathe as the chemical fumes spewed from the burning plastic.

  Mission failure.

  The Scythians would descend on them soon.

  Tessa was still in her seat, slumped and motionless. Her helmet drooped. A line of blood curved down her face. Rick Paul’s breath was shallow, but present. Beau’s ribs throbbed with every motion. His ears rang. He stumbled forward, half crawling, half limping, until his fingers found the smooth body of his Vindicator.

  With trembling hands, Beau flipped the power switch and the rifle whirred to life. He switched on the flashlight and smothered the wreckage in harsh white light. The beam shown onto broken metal and torn harnesses.

  From his position, he looked down the corridor. The pale midday sunlight spilled through the windows. He knew those doors led to the backyard, but from where their crash site was it felt like miles away. Still, the mantid fortress flickered with flames and smoldered. Once a hive of relentless motion, steam vented from the fortress’s ruptured glands. Gouts of chemical haze rose like the last breath of a great monster. Chitin plating peeled away from their spires and revealed twitching internal biological mechanisms. The structure sagged like a deflated lung and then snapped in half. It looked like a victory, but what did it matter? The mantids would soon find them, descend, and feast on their flesh.

  A cluster of mantids scrambled in the air above them. Their wings fluttered madly. Dozens of them careened through the smoke and fled through the cracked open glass doors and into the backyard. The smoke of their destroyed fortress trailed with them.

  Were they actually fleeing? Or were they regrouping?

  A fluttering sound stirred the air above their crash site.

  In a slow and elegant spiral descended General Karakis. His wings sliced the air. His carapace shimmered with fresh ichor and heat-scars. His mandibles clicked in what might’ve been a smile. His six limbs curled inward, each ending in barbs. He hovered high above the wreckage.

  “Turns out a Tinyling can’t play with fire without getting burned yourself,” Karakis mocked. “Your kind burn well, just like the fools who tried to fight us from Dome 4455.”

  Beau lifted his Vindicator and fired upward, fully automatic. He filled the air with thirty slugs. The slugs seared through the dark. Karakis twisted midair and dodged. His wings never slowed. He laughed with a sick, rhythmic sound. Once he leveled out again, Beau realized he had missed every shot.

  “Your death is coming, Tinyling,” Karakis continued, drifting above him as Beau scrambled to reach for another magazine. But as he felt around his waistline, pocket by pocket, they were all empty. They must have fallen out during the crash.

  “You won’t die here,” Karakis said.

  Beau looked up. What did he say?

  “No. Soon, I will bind your arms. I will march you through the halls of our great colonies—Scythia, Varn, even holy Malakar. And then…you will be brought to the capital in Crystal Bridges. There, we will fight in the arena, under the gaze of the King. There, I will sever your head and mount it as a trophy in my castle. I have great plans for you.”

  Beau’s jaw tightened. His lungs felt stiff. “There’s…a mantid king?” he rasped, feeling around for a spare magazine on the ground and in between the cracks in the helicopter debris. One had to be around there somewhere. He wanted desperately to kill this mantid.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “My king is eager to meet the Tinyling who believed he could topple the Kingdom of Scythia. But you fail to realize that you are unlike the humans who built this mighty world. They are all gone and only you, pathetic Tinylings, an echo of the past, remain behind in their wake. You won’t last long, though. This world isn’t meant for you.”

  Karakis dove low, his blade-arms out. He slashed so close to Beau’s face that he felt the breeze. Beau ducked just in time. He reached for the magazine in Tessa’s rifle, which she still clutched as she lay unconscious.

  “Wake up, Tessa,” he said, shaking her.

  Realizing she wasn’t waking up, he ejected Tessa’s magazine from her rifle, her last magazine, and shoved it into his rifle with a click. He then turned and aimed toward General Karakis and fired fully automatic. As the last slug fled his barrel, he realized that General Karakis was gone.

  Lights flashed over the helicopter.

  Beau aimed his empty rifle toward them.

  A white blaze of light tore through the darkness, followed by the deep growl of electric motors. He then realized the lights were headlights. Two white trucks skidded to a halt beside their crash site. Their side panels bore the Black Bird insignia.

  Reinforcements. Thank you, God.

  Out stormed soldiers clad in blue-plated P-1 combat armor, Vindicators raised. The militia’s visors gleamed in the light of the flames emitting from the helicopter’s engine. The soldier’s boots crunched over the plastic rubble as they fanned out into firing formations and searched for more sky-born mantids.

  “FIRE!”

  The night exploded with light. Dozens of shots screamed skyward. Karakis recoiled with a shriek, along with a handful of mantid soldiers Beau hadn’t noticed, who was still up there stalking him. But as the soldiers picked their targets and opened fire, General Karakis darted into an evasive spiral. His retinue dived toward the Black Bird militia, blades flashing, answering their general’s cry.

  Beau joined the formation. He pressed himself beside a young militia fighter and grabbed a fresh magazine from his pouch.

  Tessa stirred behind him, crawling from the wreck, bloodied but awake with her Vindicator in her hands. She also grabbed a fresh magazine.

  “Glad you made it!” Beau shouted, who then fired several slugs and killed a mantid flying above him which careened down and splattered against the tile.

  “Me, too!” shouted Tessa.

  The firefight erupted.

  Mantids fell like demons with their wings cut. One mantid collided with a soldier and impaled his torso. Three more mantids dived onto him and sliced at his armor, which couldn’t protect him from the onslaught. Every Black Bird turned and engaged the mantid, filling it with slugs. Their line held for a time—they were panicked but determined.

  Rena Thatcher emerged from the smoke, her knife in one hand, Vindicator in the other. She moved with a surgical focus, planting a slug into a mantid’s forehead, then slashing hard, piercing a mantid’s thorax. She rushed into the helicopter and grabbed Rick Paul’s arms and dragged him out. As she looked behind her, she froze with wide eyed terror as two mantids charged her.

  “Rena!” Beau cried out. He held his Vindicator and fired. A burst of slugs slammed into the mantid’s face, sending it sprawling to the floor, dead.

  He unleashed another burst which ripped through the second mantid’s abdomen, sending its fluids spilling onto the ground. It hunched over, cried out, and died.

  “Thanks, Beau!” Rena said, who dragged Rick back to her truck.

  They had to leave, they were quickly becoming outnumbered.

  Bodies dropped. Ichor painted the tiles in streaks. The smoke which drifted from the burning mantid fortress now surrounded them and filled the corridor. Thankfully, their P-1 armor had gas masks or they would have choked on the retched stuff.

  Finally, Karakis signaled from high above. He spun his scythe in three wide circles. The other mantids took to the skies and retreated.

  “You and your Garden of Eden will fall!” Karakis yelled. He and his remaining mantids fled back to their smoldering fortress.

  Beau watched the horizon, rifle raised, blood on his face, and wondered what kind of war they just escalated. Would they survive whatever came next?