King Ruin: A Thriller (Ruins Sonata Book 2) by Michael John Grist Page B

into Mr. Ruins' deathly face and could almost swear he is smiling.
    The room rocks and tumbles, and I am thrown from the bench. Mr. Ruins topples too. In the corridor outside Don Zachary's marines race by, rifles in their hands. There is the ratatatat of heavy artillery from far above, vibrating down through the double-hulls of this tsunami-proof bunker. It is many levels up to the water's surface where marines will be fighting marines, but how long will that take them?
    I feel the distant sting of a mind-bomb. Smoke jets out of a busted flue, and I pick myself up. The Don's bunker is under attack. I have brought them here, and here they come.
     
     
    Down metal hallways suffused with the drumbeat of stamping feet and distant plosive bursts I run, pushing Mr. Ruins ahead of me in his chair. His pulse veers erratically, disconnected from his monitor, but there is no time. Ex-skirmishers storm past me on either side, and like Me at the head of his Bathyscaphe, I turn them all to my control.
    They run along behind me, their priorities shifted. They race out down jetties and tubes, carrying through the orders I have already prepared.
    More mind-bombs sting from above, but I shield my men as best I can with the weight of others put to the Lag. They falter and pause in a dozen different narrow chutes, and I cycle through setting them back to their tasks.
    A gas-burst sprays before me, and I hold my sleeve to my face and run through it. Into the midst drops a black-clad marine, rappelling down from an exploded vent above. He wears one of the same tight-fitting HUDs, his EMR-helmet thumping tinnily through the fractious roar of rifle-fire echoing down from the vent above him.
    He slaps the rappelling line out of the way, sights me through the fog, and I shoot him in the head with a Kaos rifle of my own. He sags to hang from his rappel line like a broken toy. I run on, but before I can clear the vent another of them drops out with his rifle already aimed. I dive forward, hammer the stock of my own weapon into his face three times until he goes down, then I fire point-blank into his chest.
    He stills.  
    There are more rushing down from above, and I am back in the battle of my life, Tigrates and Ferrily either side as we make a stand for our subglacic. I've done this before, and I've lived through it before.
    I shoot up into the torn-open ceiling vent. I pull in some of the Don's men and have them hurl magnet-bombs into the gap. One more marine drops into our midst, shoots out the belly of a man to my left, then the bomb goes off and fragments him to pink mist. I feel the thick broad beam into his mind dim away.
    Running again, I have to hold Mr. Ruins into his chair. The tunnels behind me are wracked with shouts and the bloom of fire, pained bursts of energy through the bonds as men die, then we're at the airlock and there are men to greet us. Strong hands lift Mr. Ruins from his chair and guide him down, and I follow.
    A subglacic.
    Down the ladder-way I climb, all polished metal and lines of pipes and angular jutments, into the conning tower where I stand and send the commands as Ven once would have done. I crank the EOT to full reverse, then call through the ship-wide communications.
    "Disengage clamps, lock the bows, flush the trims, and set us to dive."
    Nobody speaks, because there is no need. They have trained on this at Don Zachary's behest for years, and all I need to do is send the simple instruction to activate the skills they have in place.
    With a metallic clunk and a hiss of outgas, we are sealed off from the crumpling bunker. I can see it from feeds above and throughout, displayed on the monitors all around the periscope. The whole bunker is ablaze from the top down, the corridors are filled with black-clad marines and smoke, everywhere is gunfire and violence.
    "Get him to support," I shout to the waiting medic, pointing at Mr. Ruins, hanging now in a burly man's arms. "Hook him up."
    They disappear. The screw grinds