Another hard landing on unyielding concrete. His elbow cracked painfully against it as he rolled, the launcher skidding away from him. The driverless concrete mixer roared on, engine note dropping sharply without his foot on the pedal, but still moving too fast to stop—

It smashed through the wall, sailing out from the parking structure’s highest floor – and plunged towards the hovering fortress below.

From his vantage point at the broken window, Gadreel saw his warriors returning. They had the key; now he could not only revive his people here, but find the rest of them in their long-hidden prison . . .

A new noise reached him, mechanical – coming from above. Another flying machine? He looked up, seeing nothing in the sky, but it sounded very close—

The half-collapsed building’s upper wall exploded as a huge, bizarrely shaped chariot burst through it.

It smashed down on to the fortress. Everyone within was thrown off their feet as the impact pounded the vimana’s nose into the ground. The shrill and crunch of tearing metal echoed terrifyingly through the throne room.

Gadreel was flung against the wall, striking his head. He put a hand to it as he stood, feeling the sting of a cut. Zan lay sprawled nearby, the others in the room all dizzily recovering. The floor was still canted. ‘Bring us level!’ he ordered as he returned to the window.

To his shock, he saw the chariot embedded in the fortress’s bow. The large drum it carried had split open, a thick grey slurry gushing across the hull and into the holes it had torn.

One of his men hurriedly retook the controls. Crystals glowed as more power flowed through them. The vimana struggled to rise, the chariot’s weight straining its inner structure still further. More metal groaned – and he heard the sharp crack of crystal splitting apart below.

Sidona! She was in the mausoleum—

Gadreel ran to the stairs, calling his wife’s name. He was halfway down them before a reply came. ‘I . . . I am all right,’ she said, sitting up unsteadily. ‘What happened?’

‘The humans dropped one of their chariots on top of the vimana!’

Sidona gasped as she saw a jagged crack in the crystalline wall. The chamber’s glow now stopped short of the damaged area, as if it had been poisoned. ‘The crystal is broken! It—’

They both clung to coffins as the floor shook. The fortress heaved itself clear of the ground, a huge crash coming from outside as the truck fell off. More moans and cracks around them – and a new light seeped through the translucent walls. Not the glow of the earth’s power, but daylight. ‘What has happened?’ she said, alarmed.

‘We have lost some of our armour,’ Gadreel replied in grim realisation. The adamantium plating beneath the vimana’s nose had been torn off, exposing what was shielded within.

‘The crystal heart! If it is unprotected—’