“Good,” I muttered, stopping in front of the large square building in the center of the base. “That takes care of the antiair support. The rest of us will bunker down in the armory.” Of all the buildings in the chapterhouse, it was the most defensible, with reinforced doors, few points of entry and heavy brick walls that would hold up well to dragonfire. Pulling the door open revealed that it had already been prepared for an attack; the glass in the windowpanes had been taken out and replaced with boards and sandbags, giving soldiers a spot to fire at incoming dragons. Iron barricades had been erected, creating choke points for enemy forces and cover for the rest of us. A machine gun turret was in the process of being set up near the door, pointing straight toward the entrance, so that if the door was breached, the first thing the attackers would run into would be a storm of turret fire.

I walked along the back wall, taking note of everything. Ammo, firearms, grenades, combat gear, fortifications. “Looks like we’re as ready as we can get,” I mused, feeling time slipping away from us. Only a couple hours till sundown, and after that, the countdown began in earnest. “I’ll need to report back to Martin with our progress. Is this everything?”

“Nearly,” Tristan said, stopping at a long shelf covered by a tarp. “There is one more thing.”

He flipped the canvas back, revealing a pair of RPGs—rocket propelled grenade launchers, designed to pierce armor and punch through tanks. Fired from the shoulder, the weapon’s pointed, nearly foot-long grenade did significant damage upon impact, and could severely cripple or even kill a full grown Adult dragon. Unfortunately, they weren’t that effective against agile, fast-moving targets, nor could they be deployed in public, so the Order rarely used them.

“There is one more team we haven’t talked about,” Tristan explained, his dark gaze roaming over the deadly weapons. “If the dragons break through the defenses and get into the armory, we’re screwed. We need an ace in the hole, a crack team to hang back and hit the dragons from behind. To strike at the perfect moment and do the most damage possible.”

“Basically, you need a suicide squad,” I said. “Because once that attack hits, that team is out in the open, isolated from everyone. They’ll have no support and no backup once the dragons turn on them. They go in and they wreak as much havoc as they can before they’re wiped out.”