A low, torturous rumble came from somewhere overhead. Yuri flinched, glancing up. The ruined ceiling was bulging down, the cracks multiplying. Rubble began spilling through the gaps, hurling thick gray dust clouds ahead of it. They churned in a mad tango with the black smoke gushing out of the inferno.

“Oh, shit.” He started to wonder just how good the body armor truly was. The tiny piece of rationality left in his mind was hunting down escape routes. They were all a long way off.

The loading bay door burst apart, and one of the tactical team’s four-by-fours came screeching through the rent. Wheels locked on full turn, and its back end swung around, tires howling as they left a U of scorched skid marks on the concrete floor. The front door opened. Jessika was gripping the manual steering wheel with manic strength. “You called for backup?”

A line of bullets stitched deep craters in the windscreen. The drones hurled grenades and super-velocity bullets in reprisal. Above everyone, the ceiling cracks multiplied like black lightning bolts.

Yuri snatched up Horatio’s limp form and lunged into the four-by-four. Jessika was already accelerating away before the door closed.

“Out out out!” he screamed. The tactical display showed him the paramilitaries moving fast.

Then they were outside, bucking across the wide parking lot, rain pounding the bodywork. A slender contrail streaked through the monsoon, moving so fast Yuri was still staring at it in bewilderment as it passed barely five meters above the four-by-four.

The hellbuster missile slammed into the collapsing building and detonated, obliterating it in a sun-bright plasma cloud. The blast wave punched the four-by-four with extreme force, sending it tumbling across the asphalt, every impact a hammer blow—

Yuri recovered consciousness amid a cluster of slowly deflating airbags that had completely filled the four-by-four’s interior. A lot of the flaccid white fabric in front of him was smeared with blood. The roof was below him, and the windows were all a mosaic of cracks, though amazingly they’d retained their integrity.

Horatio Seymore was sprawled on the roof beside him. Yuri watched for a few moments, checking that the boy was still breathing. Then he heard Jessika groaning. When he looked around, he saw she was hanging upside down in the front seat safety harness, blood dribbling out of her nose to run down her forehead.

“How are you doing?” he asked.

“Just peachy, thanks.” She dabbed at her nose and winced. “What the fuck just happened?”

“I have no idea.”

Juloss

JULOSS

YEAR 587 AA

Muncs didn’t normally have names. It wasn’t an infraction, but the clan’s grown-ups had always discouraged it; the cohort should be uniform, they explained, no favorites. Language was also considered a communication impediment. Muncs should know their master’s wishes without having to be designated and instructed; instinctive identification of any requirement or deployment was so much quicker. That also meant the boys had to learn how to communicate those commands at a subliminal level. The process was symbiotic.