43. The Lions of Dawrtaine II (Patreon)

Update: Unlocked for all patrons.

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Hallon launches into the air at full power.

“She is a miracle,” the General says, “and who am I but a fool in comparison.” He shoots off after her.

Milo is left behind, blinking. Too fast. Everything’s been happening too fast, and his calculations are lagging too far behind real time. There’s no helping it—he pauses everything that’s not immediately necessary and focuses on processing the inputs from the Lion and the world immediately around him, on predicting Hallon’s course of action and how he can support her, on the probable trajectories of the artillery shells given what he knows about the Scholar, the capabilities of Dawrtaine’s military, and a handful of suppositions that he’s deeply uncomfortable with but needs in order to prop up the equations. He runs the last set of numbers twice, just to be sure.

The calculations confirm it—there’s nowhere safe. Not above ground and certainly not under it. Not if he also wants to live in a world with Hallon Nilsdotter. Because she’ll kill herself trying to stop those shells. Milo closes his eyes and gulps. He gathers together what’s left of his courage and opens the throttle wide. The engine roars, and the frame shakes as the Lion lifts him above the alley. The world transforms in a near instant from drab brick to sky blue.

High above Dawrtaine, he sees Hallon hovering, aiming at nine dots as small as pinheads. Her shots go wide as she’s pushed out of position by the recoil of her guns. She fires again, this time triggering the throttle at the same time to balance the forces on her Lion. The General hovers next to her. He slides left when he fires. The two of them want to knock the shells from the sky. Milo nearly chokes on the appalling probabilities, but the necessary equations bloom in his mind, forming a bridge between him and the approaching artillery shells.

He slides into position next Hallon and triggers his own guns. He misses and drifts back. He adds more throttle, but his shots continue to miss. There are too many variables, and the equations are nothing more than rough estimates. The timing has to be perfect. Nine times perfect, once for each shell. Hallon continues to fire, and the General too, except now he’s drifting right. Milo aims. The odds are so small—nearly impossible—and they’re running out of time. The shells grow to the size of wheat grains.

Hallon yells, “Call out your targets! I have left!”

The General gets his drifting Lion under control. “Right!”

“I have center!”Milo adjusts for distance, velocity, trajectory, gravity, wind speed. He takes a deep breath and fires. The guns thunder, but the bullets arc into nothingness. Come on, he tells himself. This is physics, and if there’s one thing I can do, it’s physics. He reforms the calculations. His heart beats fast, but he gives the equations the time they need.

Hallon and the General fire in short bursts. He hears them reloading, the empty ammunition canisters falling away. The farthest shell on the left disappears, and then a second one.

“Ha!” Hallon yells. She’s proved that the targets can be hit. Two of them.

Milo’s equations glow for a heartbeat, and he fires both guns, but his sweaty fingers slip on the throttle, sending him sliding. The bullets miss. He wants to scream but doesn’t. No time. No time. No time.

Another shell on the left explodes, then the General hits one on the right. Four shells. They’ve done the impossible, but there are still five left. Milo doesn’t bother repositioning. He rides the equations, his attention split between them and his hands on the throttle and trigger. The equations align, a feeling in his belly like the feeling of a First Circle done well. The guns and throttle trigger together. Bullets fly. A shell bursts.

“Yes!”

But there are still four left. Milo fires again, but he’s too early on the timing. The next time, too late. The feeling in his belly eludes him. The equations glow for the barest of fractions of seconds, and Milo isn’t quick enough on the controls.

The whistling of the artillery shells fills the air. Soon they will speed past. Hallon turns her Lion sideways and throttles to keep pace with them. The General and Milo follow suit, but the calculations grow more tangled. The probability of hitting their targets is even smaller now.

All three reload as the artillery shells begin their downward arc. Hallon rights her Lion and lets herself fall, firing at them from below. The General hovers and shoots at them from above. His is the more sensible plan, but there’s a chance stray bullets will hit people on the ground.

Milo follows after Hallon, cutting the power to his engine. There’s a moment when he’s just hanging in the sky—panting, the sound of Hallon’s guns, the whistling of the shells—and then he’s falling, his stomach lunging up into his throat for the second time today. He rights his Lion so that he’s facing up and aims.

Fear courses through his body in waves, and all the world shrinks down to the small piece of sky above him, the rat tat tat of the guns, and the wind as he falls to the ground. The guns click empty, and he automatically reloads. The ammunition canister falls alongside him.

A shell explodes in a cloud of yellow-green gas. The General’s doing.

Milo guns pour out bullets, tracking towards a shell and bursting it. Two left. There are two left. His face is covered in sweat, the salt burning his eyes. His guns click empty. The reloading mechanism clacks and clacks as he pushes the button again and again. There’s no more ammunition. He rouses and realizes the city’s rooftops are approaching with frightening speed. Hallon’s down to firing single-shots. He reignites his engine and speeds towards her. “Pull up! The ground!”

She ignores him.

“Pull up!”

But she doesn’t. All her attention is on the sky and the remaining two shells full of poison.

Milo knocks his Lion into hers and hooks an arm under her shoulder. He braces with the other in as good a grip as he can manage before firing his engine at maximum throttle. His Lion jerks with the extra weight, and Hallon’s swings with the sudden deceleration, but he doesn’t lose her. She changes positions and braces her Lion against his. She keeps firing. Another shell impossibly explodes.

Too fast. They’re still traveling much too fast as the rooftops flash past. Milo and Hallon crash onto the broad expanse of grass in the middle of Dawrtaine’s Council Plaza. The force of the landing sends Milo’s Lion down to its knees, metal groaning in protest. Hallon’s Lion shudders with the impact. She’s still on her side, still firing. The last remaining shell remains intact and explodes at the eastern edge of the plaza, ringing Milo’s ears.

Yellow-green gas billows towards them.

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Ministry buildings surround the park in the middle of Council Square. Milo had visited once before out of curiosity. At the time, government workers sat on the neatly-trimmed grass, eating their lunches. The scene had been idyllic but strange—Gloop aren’t allowed in the square, and Milo found himself missing the colors and variety of No Town’s equations.

That was then. Now, the government workers run and scream. They clutch at their throats and stumble to the ground, as the poison gas spreads, sending tendrils out to reach for those running away.

The hydraulics in Milo’s Lion are shot and the engine nozzle bent. Hallon’s is in even worse condition. Neither will be moving any time soon. She kicks the latches open and climbs out. Her face is pale, and the bandages around her right arm are soaked red.

“Let’s go,” she says, her voice hoarse.

Milo scrambles free, and they run from the poison gas expanding behind them. Someone to the left sobs, but whoever it is, isn’t visible through the bushes. Hallon slides to a stop. The tendrils of Siloxin have merged to block the path.

“Other way,” she says.

They dash past a handful of trees towards the park’s edge. The poison gas billows as a bakery truck passes through to pull up onto the grass.

The driver yells. “This way! This way! I’ll drive you out!”

Milo turns towards the truck, but Hallon grabs him and throws him to the ground. The truck explodes pelting the area around them with debris. A group of Silent wearing baggy rubber suits emerges from the smoke. One is a Red wearing two suits stitched together. He reloads his grenade launcher, while the other Silent open fire on the people fleeing the square. Gunshots tell the story of more Silent at the other end of the park.

Hallon makes an animal sound. “That. Hurt.”

Milo helps her to standing. “Your shoulder.”

“Later.” She points to the Ministry of Education. The building is short—only ten stories where the others are fifteen or sixteen—but it should still be tall enough to get above the Siloxin. The problem is that they have to run through the poison to reach the doors. It’s either that or face the massacre unfolding at the square’s boundaries.

Milo holds his breath and runs after Hallon. The world turns yellow-green. His eyes burn. His skin itches. He trips over a body obscured by the gas. The ground is slippery, and he’s forced to crawl on his hands and knees to get clear, to stagger to his feet towards the stairs leading to the building’s entrance.

From the corner of his eye, he sees Eratosthenes's puppet fighting something invisible. Bodies are strewn across the lobby. Milo’s heart feels like it’s going to burst, but he helps Hallon close the large doors behind them. They run to the stairs to the second floor. He’s halfway up when he can’t hold his breath any longer. The air is bitter, and he coughs the poison instantly back out, his throat on fire. Dizzy, he tumbles, the world spinning.

Hallon grabs his arm. Lifts him up. He feels a desperate need to cough, to vomit, to void his bowels. Light and dark pass before his eyes. Light and dark, light and dark, until his body comes to rest, though the world still spins around him.

He coughs and coughs, doing his best to hack up his lungs. He vomits. Hard. There’s nothing in his belly, but his stomach shakes with the effort. After, he lays on the cool stone floor.

Hallon checks on him. Wanders away. Comes back with water, blessed water for his burning throat. All he wants to do is rest, but she won’t let him. “The gas is coming up the walls,” she says, “and I don’t trust the windows to keep it out.”

Milo clears the gunk from his eyes. The numbers are blurry and trembling with fear. He looks past them to see Hallon crouched in front of him, peering at his face. They’re in a small office with two desks and two chairs, one of them overturned. Papers are scattered everywhere. A bunch of them are stuffed under the door to keep the poison out.

His pants are wet. Somewhere along the way, he’d pissed himself. Hallon offers him a hand up, but Milo pushes to standing without it. She nods and heads for the door. His legs are unsteady, but when Hallon opens the door, he runs.

The corridor is empty except for the yellow-green gas. A narrow rug, paintings on the walls—Milo doesn’t have time to look. They climb from the second floor to the third, third to fourth, fourth to fifth, and Milo can’t hold his breath anymore. He gasps for air, but the Siloxin hasn’t made it up this far yet. At the sixth floor, he stops to let the shaking in his legs pass. Hallon doesn’t say anything. She just waits until he’s ready.

At the tenth floor, the rug is faded, the color a worn blue. There are no paintings here, just windows overlooking the now yellow-green Council Square. The corridor is empty except for a woman peeking out from her office. She quickly withdraws, shutting the door. At the far end, there’s a door labeled Roof Access. It’s locked, and Hallon rests her head against it. Milo glances back down the corridor. The woman from earlier watches them, half hidden by her office.

“Milo, can you break down the door?” Hallon asks. “I don’t think my arm can take it.”

His legs feel like jelly. “I can try.”

Hallon makes a sound, which he thinks means, “Okay,” and steps away from the door.

Milo takes a breath and braces before kicking. The impact reverberates through his leg up into his spine, but the door doesn’t budge.

“It’s reinforced.” The woman has a round face framed by dark hair. The equations around her eyes indicate that she’d been sobbing. “In case the Silent try to come in through the roof. They did that once, so Security strengthened the door. I used to go to the roof for tea. Now they keep the it locked all the time.” She stares at Hallon’s injured arm, at Milo shirtless and bloodied. “Are you two all right?”

Hallon laughs, the equations disconcerting. “Not really.”

The woman bites her lip. “Are we going to die, do you think?”

“Not if we can help it,” Hallon says.

“I’m not supposed to have this,” the woman says, pulling out a small key. “I still go up to the roof sometimes.” She unlocks the door.

Hallon shocks the woman by kissing her. “Thank you.”

They head upstairs to another door, quickly unlocked. A thin layer of white dust covers the roof, but the air is clear and the sirens have quieted. It’s almost peaceful.

“The fighting must’ve stopped,” Hallon says.

Milo follows her to the edge of the roof. “I wonder who won.”

“No one,” Hallon says. “No one ever wins.”

Siloxin blankets the square. Bodies—some killed by the gas, others by bullets—lie scattered everywhere. The scene is incomprehensible to Milo. How is he supposed to understand these equations? “What do we do now?”

Hallon stares at the carnage. “I don’t know.”

In the air, softly at first, comes the sound of a whistle.

“More artillery,” Hallon whispers. Then suddenly she’s on her knees retching.

“What’s wrong? Hallon? Hallon?”

“No good,” she says, panting. Her teeth clench from the pain. “I can’t reach my power.”

Milo eases her to sitting and wipes away the saliva at her mouth.

Her equations tremble with frustration. “You still haven’t heard from Eratosthenes?”

“No.”

Above them, the whistling grows louder.