"So, new boy, what's your gig?" Subaru blinked at the woman; she was taller and older, with a lean, mean cut to her face and tattoos that sagged with stretched, wrinkled skin. She was also looking him up and down like a set of meat she didn't particularly feel like buying.
"Uhm… what?" he blinked at her.
Vamberfeld rubbed his face with one long hand as if to brush away annoyance. Subaru got the strong feeling that wasn't the correct response.
"She means, what gun do you know how to use?" Vamberfeld's voice, as ever, was soft yet trying to sound big. It reminded him so painfully of Otto for a second that he lost his breath. A heavy, terrible ache in his chest.
He snapped back to focus on the wrinkled, grim-coated fingers of Gilda snapping in his face. He also got the strong sense that pointing out how rude that was wasn't the correct response either.
"So what will it be, boy?"
"Straight-jack," Vamberfled said, fiddling with a button on his coat. Subaru had noticed, during his brief acquaintance with the older man, that it was a routine gesture. The buttons were worn away from his fingers. He also noticed that when Vamberfeld didn't do it, his hands shook.
He glanced away. He knew what it was like to be something you weren't. Gilda raised an eyebrow at them, scoffing. "He ain't good enough for a straight-jack."
Subaru's lips twitched. He was scared, sure, but it was hard to be too frightened when an old woman was acting like a bad drill sergeant from a TV show.
"Come on." He said, raising his arm and flexing. "I do know how to swing, at least."
She did not look impressed.
They were in one of their bunker districts. Subaru had taken to calling them foxholes when he first saw them. Though Vermberlfed had no idea what a fox was, he had given Subaru a bit of a funny look when he said it.
A bunch of little holes in the ruined structures cobbled together from whatever these people could find. In what he had learned were called habs, metal boxes like shipping containers, but with people in them.
He didn't say it reminded him of snake holes he had once seen as a child when he visited them on a family vacation, and they went to their Badlands. All yellow rock sunbleached and holey.
They were standing before what "Vamberfeld" called the armament station. Subaru didn't know if he was trying to be funny or not. It was a plywood desk stacked with crates behind this little terrifying old woman.
Her eyes glared down at anyone who got too close as people bustled out behind them, most digging deeper into the metal, trying to make the bunker better at avoiding the pounding of shells overhead.
Subaru had been told by Vamberfeld as he took the long flight of makeshift steps they had constructed that he had been fortunate to have wandered in when they weren't being shelled.
He had even joked Subaru must have been emperor-blessed, though Subaru didn't know what that meant. He had a feeling, though, that he shouldn't make a joke about it. He had learned that much in his time as Emilia's Knight.
"None." He said just a tad nervously. It was hard not to be nervous with the sound of constant shelling ringing in his ears, even in one of their little bunkers. All low light and the scent of dust, liquor, and human sweat in the air.
She raised a single grey eyebrow, accompanied by a massive mole, giving the impression of a particularly fat animal. Before sneering, showing yellowing, rotted teeth. Subaru tried not to be rude and wrinkle his nose, though the compulsion was strong.
"An up-hiver then." She scoffed. Subaru did not know what that meant, but he knew by her tone it wasn't a good thing. A rich kid, he guessed. Someone with soft hands and a smooth life. He didn't miss those days, but sometimes he did miss when he didn't know days beyond those days.
"Out worlder." Vamberfeld corrected softly by rubbing the back of his neck. "Gilda, just give the kid a gun. I know I don't know what to shoot for, grow, and I still have one."
The one light, a burned-out thing Vamberfeld had joked they stole from an up-guilders' house a few days ago, flickered. Its golden foliage is out of place among the dark, grim-coated walls. However, it, too, was starting to get clogged in a layer of things best left to the imagination.
Gilda turned her sharp eye on Vamberfeld, who, despite being glared at by a comparatively more minor old woman, flinched back as if slapped. Catching himself at the last second, a blush seemed to rise to his sickly skin. One not even in the grim could cover up.
"Shut it, guild boy."
Her yellow eyes fell on Subaru again. "Figures, what are you? Some serving boy to a bunch of big soldiers?"
Subaru, who, despite having faced sinful archbishops, beasts of untold horror, and speak to the closest thing he could think of for a god, couldn't hold eye contact with the old, hunched figure.
She leaned back, her thin, knife-like fingers drumming a tap-tap motion against the wood. Seeming to take Subaru's measure. He gulped, straightening his back; he was Emilia's Knight; he would not be scared of an old hunched-over crone.
"Fine," she snapped, and Subaru nearly flinched at her tone, sharp and brittle in his ear.
"You have death in your eyes, boy; that's good enough for now." Subaru turned, blinking at her as Vamberfeld sighed. Loudly.
"Warming to me already?" Subaru grinned at her, but she just gave him one long stink eye.
The old lady held up one bony finger as she turned back, opening one of what must have once been sealed crates behind her. Waddling over like some great old turtles. Heaving up the old wooden lid with a breathless grunt, her arms, despite their flabby skin, were hard and solid from what must have been years of hard labor.
She rifled through it, her gnarled fingers beating through what looked like a plastic straw and pulling out a heavy-looking gun. The straw crinkled at the motion.
Subaru thought for a second to offer to help as she grunted, heaving the gun up, but decided against it. She didn't seem the type to take kindly to young men providing help. She let it thunk heavily on the little plywood table she had been using as a stand as Subaru stared down at it.
"Well, cherry-boy, pick it up." Gilda snapped with all the impatience of an old person with too many back problems to count.
Subaru glanced at it; he knew how to use swords, whips, and even knives at times, but there was something about picking up a different gun. For a moment, he let his hands hover over the heavy-looking instrument. Feeling it was cool, the handle was faded green, even though he was told they were new.
A single double-headed eagle stamped on its front that Subaru thought looked a little Roman. He picked it up, expecting it to be too heavy, and it was, but it was lighter than he thought it should be.
He heaved, letting its weight in both his hands, shifting it for a more comfortable grip. Felt its trigger with his hand and made sure its barrel wasn't pointed at anyone. For something that could kill so many, it didn't seem to weigh anything at all. Subaru wished it did.
He shifted it in his grip, letting it rest lightly like a baby in his arms. It was cold, the metal digging into his hands, and it smelt like nothing. He doubted that would last.
Still, he was Subaru, and so he plastered a big grin on his face. His heart was thudding a little, that kind of adrenaline he always got when he knew he was about to get into something that would kill him.
"So what?" He swung the gun up, making sure it wasn't pointed at anyone as he did. "Do I just pew pew the bad guys?"
The old woman snorted, and Vamberfled sighed. It was a very loud sigh.
Vamberfeld slapped his gun down and whacked the top of his head. "Safety, you idiot." His voice rose in a sharp tone.
Subaru gingerly rubbed the place he had been slapped, letting a sheepish expression flicker across his face. "Sorry, sorry." he put the gun barrel down again. His hand was shaking a little, and he wished it didn't. He didn't want to give away just how nervous holding a gun made him.
Gilda raised a brow. "What're you doing?" she pointed one wagging gnarled finger at Vamberfeld. "Get him to Gannen. Stop wasting an old lady's time."
"Right, right." Vamberfeld pushed Subaru away from the rickety table. "Sorry, sorry."
Subaru let himself be pushed. Keeping the goofy expression on his face. "Well, she's just wonderful." He said with false cheer.
"I heard that," her voice snapped out, and Vamberfeld shoved Subaru forward.
"Move." He said it with a bit of fanfare as he started walking. That was a run, but he was trying not to be. Subaru laughed as he stumbled, shifting so the strap fell over his shoulder, and he swung the gun to his back. The weight was a strange counterbalance to his own.
Vamberfeld gave him the stink eye once they were far enough away. "Did you have to do that?"
"Oh, come on." Subaru patted him on the shoulder, which Vamberfeld promptly leaned away from. "It's all in good fun."
"She serves dinner, you idiot; now we'll get the worst proportion for weeks."
"If we live long enough for that." Subaru winked at Vamberfeld; he was starting to take a shine to the wiry clerk, who only narrowed his eyes at him. Then promptly got pulled hard by the older man as someone served past, cursing out with a stack of ammo cartridges for one of the heavy guns up on the makeshift palisades outside.
"Watch where you're going, you gawk." An angry older man snapped out. It was one of the ones that had not yet been deaf. Most others were from the shelling Subaru had quickly learned.
"You idiot," Vamberfeld said again as Subaru got his footing and stumbled to grin up at him.
"Thanks," Subaru said sincerely in his voice. He knew better than to be an arrogant prat; he had known better since that day Reinhard had saved him in that alley a lifetime ago.
Vamberfeld glanced away, a slight blush staining his cheeks brighter now. The same one as before, returning. "Shut up, now come on, and watch where the emperor's bones you're going!"
"Sir, yes, sir." Subaru saluted, straightening with mock seriousness, dodging Vamberfled's swatting hand as he did.
They walked through the lively space, passing men in haphazard uniforms if it could be called that, and women moving fingers too quickly for Subaru to follow. He had learned from Vamberfeld that most of the people here were just like everyone else.
Not soldiers before the war. Everyone thought it was a trade war with another hive, Subaru taking note of the term Zoican they called it.
Most of them had lost their hearing in the bombing a few weeks back. At that, Subaru had been honestly surprised the place had looked like a burned-out hellscape when he was up on the surface. Yet, he had learned it had only been a few weeks since the war had started.
They had to make a medic station out of a bakery. Subaru had remarked if they had taken the pastries first, which had gotten him another of what he was learning were Vamberfled's looks. Everyone knew sign language, and Subaru was promised he'd be taught it soon enough.
He glanced down at his gun. Still too light, yet too heavy in his hands. He hoped he would be. If all he learned from this whole mess was how to poorly shoot a gun, then he would be thoroughly disappointed. Garfiel will want better stories than that when he gets back.
He would get back. He gripped his gun harder, feeling the cold bit of it on his skin. No matter how many times he had to die.
Calie glanced up; she couldn't hear anymore, not since a shell took out her hearing, much like the other loom girls when one of those bastard Vorcian shells took out the other half of their manufactorum, but she could see well enough, and she didn't like what she was seeing.
She tapped Gannen, who was working on cleaning out his mess tin, to make another batch of soup over the fire they had set up on the law burner. It had gone clunky with rotten meat they got from raiding the surrendering hab blocs, and the stub gunner had said they could get really sick off it.
Calie didn't think so. She had eaten worse meat, but she knew better than to bother the tired man. If he felt he needed to clean out his mess tin. Far be it from her to complain. They would be dead soon enough anyway. Why worry about the little things?
He glanced up at her, his eyes tired of coal-black things in a broad face. Signing to her. "What is it?" His hands moved in clumsy motions, old gangster slang now co-opted for the deafening litany of worker girls.
She pointed over, and he glanced over his hand, falling to his sidearm. He was an actual Vergast PDF before this. Not like her and the others who only joined up when there was that or starvation in the shell-soaked streets.
He got to keep a sidearm and promised her that if he died first, she could keep it. It's why she hadn't tried to steal another yet.
He narrowed his eyes at the two approaching figures, jutting like nervous hive rats, she thought toward them. They came a little closer, and she could now see them. Two more sad sacks of meat in grubby clothing.
One of them paused, narrowing her eyes and whistling despite not being able to hear it. Gannon glanced at her.
"Just some fresh blood." He signed. "What is it?"
She moved her fingers a little more adeptly at the symbols. She used to live in Blue Rat territory before all this went down and got to learn the movements a little better, even before her hearing went all to hell.
"That boy has real cotton on; look at the make. Haven't seen that since before," she didn't have to specify what before she meant. There was only one.
He blinked and put his men's tin down on the old rag they had gotten from a corpse. It made a slight clinking sound on the metal framework they were crouched behind.
"Grox, you're right; think the kid's some up-hiver guilders brat?" Both hands are now singing to her.
She glanced back; they were almost on them now. She recognized Vamberfled, the tired old clerk trudging along beside the boy. He was just a boy, she thought, and had a fresh face full of meat. Weary though.
This one knew how to fight, she thought. Maybe not well, but someone trained him. He reminded her of the arbiters who used to knock down doors when their budget was short. Drum up cash any way they could. Low grunts who didn't move like hive rats but like someone who taught them how to fight.
"No." She shifted her fingers. They were cold and stiff in the air, and she wished she could put them back in her armpits for warmth. But Gannen was looking at her now, and she still stupidly felt like she had to prove something to the old soldier.
"His eyes are too old for that. Some off-worlder is my guess. I don't recognize his features." It wasn't quite what she said, though that was what she thought. There weren't any gang signs for those words. But Gannen got the gist of it even though she used the sign for target rather than off-worlder.
Gannen shifted; he must be able to hear them now. Thrones damned, she missed that she didn't know how she would survive without being able to hear someone coming. It left her feeling exposed. She turned to and saw one of them call up. Vamberfled, his mouth moving, and she focused hard.
Some of the other girls had started to lip-read. Better than her, she was always slow at stuff like that. The old outfits were better at it. They used to do it for their matrons for clients, but loom girls like them only did it to avoid overseers.
Still, she picked up a few things. Vamberfled mentioned that this was the second stub emplacement at 567/kk. Which was true, and she saw Gannen yell back that it was. They talked a little more, and she tried to ignore that heavy little feeling of loss in her chest when she could barely follow their lips.
The boy glanced at her, frowning, and she got an up-close look at him now. Down below them, he had dark, healthy, healthy-looking skin and hair like the smug that clocked the air on the worst forge days. Just when tithes were due. It was his eyes, though, that stopped her in her tracks.
It was a yellowish-brown, like the slime that Factory East would pump out when treating the fabrics, but that wasn't what made something cold slither up her spine. It was the look on their faces for just a second, as something naive stopped appearing on the kid's face.
Instead, it felt for a second like she was looking into the eyes of one of those old guardsmen who retired back. She only met one, the most expensive enforcer on the block, until he was killed by a shiv in the cuts. He had eyes like that, though, like he had stared into death a thousand times.
Like it had stared back.
She looked away, it wasn't her problem. Gannen would get the kid fitted and teach him the basics of his new laser gun.
She doubted she would ever see him again. One of them would be dead soon enough. That she wasn't certain. Everyone would be dead soon enough. She turned back to her stuffer, making sure that the barrel was fitted correctly, as Gannon had taught her, and everything was lined up.
It's the only thing that made her feel like maybe everything didn't suck now. Well, everything always sucked but didn't suck as much as everything sucked since the war started.
She tried using the oil they had stolen from a VPHC guardhouse they had looted long ago. Washing the barrel down, making sure there weren't any jams in the big gun. Yet, the image of those eyes didn't go away even as Gannon sighed, tapping her on the shoulder.
She glanced at him and the ground. They were gone now. Must have gotten what they came for.
"What did they want?" she signed despite knowing the answer. Gannen gave her a funny look, picking up his mess tin again with one hand.
"Instructions on the gun."
She turned to him. For a moment, her hand went to move. Went to ask if he noticed the boy. If he saw his eyes. Then she dropped it.
"What?" his fingers moved into the pinky motion the question brought.
"Nothing," she turned back to her gun.
He stared at her a moment longer, then shrugged before dropping the mostly clean rag into their water ration. Using a little bit of it to wet the cloth, he could then go back to washing out his tin. Getting it ready for another sloppy soup. If it could even be called that.
When she was done, she let the rag drop and tucked her hands into her sides, hunching in. It was cold, she thought, the image of those eyes finally fading from her mind.
It wasn't her problem anyway.
The Fencer moved; he sometimes felt too young for this. Sometimes too old, it didn't matter. He was in charge of this grozshit, and he would do what he could. He had sixty troops. Now, sixty-one, he heard under his command. He was going to meet him now; surely he had ordered any able-bodied non-coms to aid him, but that didn't mean he wouldn't meet them.
He was a PDF captain, and the central spine might think this section was blasted to the warp and back, but there were still people fighting here. He could at least honor them enough to shake hands.
He had to make his rounds anyway and see if they had finally managed to link up to house command, though he doubted it. He might not be one of those imperial guardsmen he had heard brought in for the fight right before they lost contact with House Command, but he was still a Vervunhive; he knew better than to hope for the impossible.
He had fifty troops when this whole thing started, he thought. He still remembered them as he moved along the outback southwest. Where they had been initially stationed before the shelling had flattened the outer city behind them. Once the industrial heartland of Vervunhive was abandoned, nothing but the corpses of dead manufacturers and roving bands of those who hadn't made it into the central spire proper before the shields went up remained.
He had tried to take in as many non-commissioned officers as he could and put any of the able-bodied men to work after his company had been slowly whittled down to just eighteen men. Most thoughts were of old factory clerks or workers. Barely knew how to hold a gun, and he didn't have enough men to teach them.
Or enough time. Still, they did the best they could. He had followed Vervun Primary emergency combat protocols to the letter, organizing the digging of a series of trenches, supply lines, and fortifications through the ruins of the outhauls. However, the shelling still fell on them.
It was the nineteenth day now, and for all their work, it didn't seem much reasonable.
He checked on Kolea first, his most useful recruits, twenty-one miners from deep works, seventeen. Buried when the shelling started, they had dug their way out, trapped beneath the earth. He should give the man a field promotion, he knew. Some brevet rank.
Damned it mattered anyways. Something was off about today. He knew it deep in his bones and could smell it on the ash-choked air.
For some strange reason, he was almost certain today would be the day he died. The big silent man, he doubted he was ever much of a sinner, but now, with a dead family in the hive, he doubted he would ever really smile again.
It was his fury that Fencer appreciated, as well as his natural leadership.
"Everything clear?" He shouted up, and Kolea, leaning back on the wall of the lookout, a hot tin of water in hand, his lasgun at his side, nodded.
"Late morning wake-up call." His voice was gruff and echoed naturally. "But nothing unusual."
Fencer nodded. Knowing Kolea was referring to the heavy shelling they had gotten that morning. A bad sign Fencer felt. No one wasted that much ammunition at once unless you were trying to clear the way.
"Good, send a runner if anything changes."
He was already turning as he heard Kolea's affirmative. He made rounds through the trenches and barricades for the outhauls they had made their own. All the good enforcement against motor shells was there.
Still, he tried not to let his fears show to the men. He was, at the very least, a better commander than that. He broke up a betting game at one of the guard posts. It wasn't time for that, and I ordered one of the men to be flogged for drinking some looted liquor well on watch. However, it was otherwise an uneventful day.
Didn't feel that way, though. In his blood, he knew that something was wrong.
He finally made it to the outer eastern outhaul, where the new blood was supposed to be. He liked to learn their names. The non-coms who took up arms deserved that much. Vamberfled was the one the kid had been put with.
Thane and Clovis, both of whom are former miners, are lean men despite being almost complete opposites in personality.
Thane grooved like Kolea and was harsh and critical even when he shouldn't be, but he was older. A hiver past his salts, as they might say. Aging out of the workforce leads to starvation. He had no family to speak of, if he remembered right, no life beyond his work in the mines.
This whole death might be an emperor's send for him; at least then, he would die for something. On the other hand, Clovis was an apprentice if he remembered right, blond, handsome, cold as a deep mine slug but a sleek gambler.
The Fencer had to order him flogged even within the last six days of his joining just due to card games. If he made it out of here, Fencer thought he would have the mildest respect for the commissars. Bastards, the lot of them, but their job was tiring.
He called up and got the all-clear signal before walking a little way forward to finally get a look up at the watch hab of the fresh face. It was a kid damned young one, too, probably too young even for the guard. Fresh-faced and nervous-looking. With sharp, hard eyes that softened from the goofy expression on his face.
He was trying to balance his lasgun on the top of his head. One foot up as Vamberfled snapped at him to stop goofing off. He could just make him out from one of the cut-open windows they made on the habs.
The Fencer moved quickly.
"Put that damned thing down!" The boy startled, half tumbling as his lasgun made a thud against the metal meshwork of a floor the habblocks they were using as watchtowers had.
He climbed onto one of the nearby metal windows and hissed as Fencer moved up below. He must have banged his knee on the metal wall. Serving the idiot right, Fencer thought, moving over to the rope they used to climb up.
Pulling himself up with practiced hands, grabbed the open edge of the manhole and pulled himself up into the dark space.
Halt stomping now, annoyed. He made quick work climbing up and into the darkly lit hab itself. Smelling of sweat and stank, cloistered air.
He turned to face the kid first, getting a proper look at him. His gun was on the ground now, having fallen from his head, and he was rubbing his knee. Prodding at it gently and hissing.
The Fencer wasn't feeling much pity.
"What in the emperor's teeth were you thinking?" He snapped, moving over as the boy glanced up, eyes widening.
Fencer ignored his stuttering response as he reached for the gun and checked its safety. Throne damned, he thought, relaxing slightly; it was on. Still, that's what he thought if he knew it.
He snapped the butt of the gun to the boy's face. Who cried out, clutching his teeth as he slammed against the wall. The Fencer didn't have time to be gentle. As he lunged, Vambergled scrambled up behind them.
He slammed the barrel of the gun over the boy's neck, stopping him cold as he met his eyes.
They were warm brown with little amber flecks like what you might see on a nobleman's ears. He knew it was just a kid, but sometimes stuff like that gets people killed.
"Well?" he said now in a low, soft voice, pressing the gun harder on the boy's neck. His hands scrambled up to try to push him off pathetically. "Explain yourself."
They gasped, and Fencer finally allowed some of the pressure to be relieved, letting him speak.
"I… it was just a joke."
Vamberfled winced in the corner of Fencer's eye, and the boy paled at the reaction, seeming to realize that was the wrong thing to say.
"A joke?" Fencer said low and calm.
"Sir." Vamberfled tried to cut in, and Fencer gave him a sharp look that told him now was not the time to test his patience.
"Mind to repeat that?"
The kid gulped it loudly in the dark, stinking room. "I… didn't mean any harm." He tried in a quieter voice.
"No," The Fencer said, finally letting off the pressure on the kid's neck. He crumpled to the ground in an ungainly heap. "No harm until that thing goes off by accident. No harm until a sniper gets you to throw the window because your idiocy can be seen a mile away. No harm until Vamberfled here's brains are splattered across the wall." The kid winced at that, and Fencer felt a little reassured that at least he wasn't one of those cold-hearted idiots.
Get to your damned feet. Now!"
The kid scrambled up, looking a little more sheepish. Good, hopefully, the idiot could learn, though he doubted it. He sighed, rubbing his face. That wasn't the proper reaction, and he knew it now. He was just so damned tired that if he lost two men to some kid's idiocy, he didn't think he could do this anymore.
He straightened and gave the kid a once over. Lovely clothes made from real cotton, with healthy skin and full cheeks. Off-worlder, for sure. He must have come in with the guard, but Fencer didn't know how he got there and didn't have the time or energy to find out.
"Your name, kid?" He handed back the lasgun, which was resting against his knee, and the kid took it nervously now. He is a little more cautious with his handling.
"Subaru." He said his voice was damned young for this. Throne Fencer realized with a jolt that this was the youngest he had under him now. Didn't matter now, but it was a sobering thought.
"Subaru Natsuki."
He nodded, noting it. If he survived and the kid didn't, he would make sure he got him a place. Maybe not a grave but a place.
"Next time. Don't act like an idiot."
The kid straightened and gave a kind of salute. Hand him forward and out. "Sir, yes, sir." The Fencer wanted to smile suddenly.
"Stupid kid," he thought.
He turned to Vamberfled, who was rolling the buttons of his coat between his fingers. "All clear?"
"Yes, sir," the weary man said in a tired voice. He knew the former clerk wasn't cut out for this groxshit. That didn't matter either.
"Good, send Natsuki here if anything changes."
"Yes, sir," Vamberfleds fingers moving in the sign of Aquila.
Fencer nodded before giving the kid one more stink eye. "No more games." His voice was stern and demanding.
The kid nodded. "No more games."
Fencer blinked once, surprised. Suddenly, the kid's eyes looked far too old for his face. He shook the thought away before moving back to climb down the rope. He would swing by Kolea's outpost again. See if anything has changed.
He had a feeling he was missing something.
Subaru played with the thread of his coat. They were silent now after the man had left. Subaru didn't play with his gun now. He didn't play with his coat either; that was a Vamberfled thing. He didn't want to take it; everyone needed their troupe.
He glanced up. His cheek still ached from where he had been hit.
"So, forgive me?"
Vamberfled looked up, dark eyes worn down and tired. "Wasn't anything to do with me." He settled on the button creasing under his finger.
"Yeah." Subaru began. "Still scared of you."
Vamberfled turned away, scoffing. "Didn't scare me, you don't know rustshit."
Subaru glanced at him. "Sorry, I-" Vamberfled head snapped up suddenly, and Subaru reached for his gun by his side.
He frowned; he hadn't realized that in the few hours he had it, he had developed the habit. He didn't like it, though.
"What?"
Vamberfled moved up to the nest wall, peering out. "Hear that?"
Subaru frowned. "Hear what?"
Vamberfled looked at him, his hands white-knuckled on his gun. "Exactly."
And Subaru realized what he meant; the sound of shelling had stopped. He paused his heart, suddenly going thump thump thump in his chest. He stood his gun up. He tried to think about why that was a bad thing. Tried to remember those war movies he had watched.
It hit him all at once.
"Oh," he said and met Vamberfled's eyes.
"They're on us." Vamberfled breathed out.
Subaru lunged.
They dropped hard to the ground as a wave of laser fire lit up the smog-blanket sky like a small sun going off all at once. The sheer scale of it was deafening as he held Vamberfled down as the roof and walls above them were shredded apart.
Subaru meets Vamberfeld's eyes wide and filled with terror. He felt something shaking under him. It was Vamberfled, his hands letting his guns go; it had clattered to the floor next to them. The volley finally ended just as the screaming started.
He realized with a jolt that it wasn't just Vamberfled's hands shaking. His were, too.