He tried to temper his excitement. He didn’t want to crave that high as much as he did. It’ll just take a few minutes, he told himself, and then I can disengage. He could already feel the Heavenly Kingdom’s army, far below, settling in. Their nose had been bloodied by Rolling Fuck’s rocketry, but they’d suffered relatively few casualties so far. The plan did seem to be working. Dozens of vehicles and thousands of men had already moved into position around the Rock Creek neighborhood. Roland could hear the sound of their mortars, recoilless rifles, and assault guns opening fire.

He reached out with his senses and tried to find Topaz and Skullfucker Mike in the mess, but their scents and heat profiles were obscured by shellfire and smoke. Roland was able to locate Jim, as well as Bigsby and his assault team. They were hunkered down at the edge of the neighborhood, embedded in an abandoned apartment complex and engaged in a furious firefight with the Heavenly Kingdom’s vanguard. Roland could smell the dopamine rushing into Jim’s synapses from fifteen thousand feet in the air.

His heart began to beat faster. He felt his left hand start to shake. Not in fear, but in delirious anticipation of the battle drugs. Another flash of memory took him, and–

–his hand shook so bad he could barely hold the needle straight. He’d already missed the vein twice. “God dammit, god dammit!” he cursed before taking a deep breath and preparing himself to try again–

“Sixty seconds to drop,” the pilot’s voice pulled Roland back into the moment. That memory had felt weird. It had been blurry in his mind’s eye, but Roland’s hands and arms had felt smaller then. Was I shooting up dope as a teenager? He knew the answer, based on his current predilections, was probably.

Roland shook his mind away from the past and focused, again, on the war downstairs. The Kingdom had moved quickly; he guessed around four thousand of their men were already in position. These would be the elite, their most veteran fighters, the soldiers wearing power armor or riding in real armored transports and not up-gunned trucks. He could feel the rest of the Kingdom’s army flung out far behind them, in a long tail that stretched back to the Brazos. How many of these men will die today? How many are already dead?

“Ten seconds!”

His nose caught the distant gasoline reek of a flamethrower opening up on a squad of advancing Martyrs. That’s got to be Jim, right?

“Five seconds!”

The jump light turned from red to green and the bomb bay doors opened with a rush of air and wind that cracked the uncovered skin on Roland’s face.

“Three,” said the pilot.