Hannah's mech touched down 200 feet below her as she drifted, suspended from the harness of her own parachute. It came down on a steep slope just outside the fence around the power plant. It flopped over on its side and slid a few feet before coming to a rest. A machine gun roared, and bullets kicked up dirt and rocks all around it. What had looked like a concrete platform from above, Hannah realized, was a machine gun pillbox. Flames spat from the side as it sent another shower of bullets at her mech.

Hannah raised a shield, blocking the bullets from reaching her robot. She reached out through her bond to get her mech to stand. But before she could do it, the ground came rushing up. She landed hard, crumpling into a heap and rolling down the slope. The impact drove the wind from her and sent shooting pains through her hips and back.

She groaned and rolled over. Dirt showered around her. She drew on her magic and threw up a shield in the direction she thought the gun lay. Then she fumbled at the straps of her chute, trying to release the parachute while keeping her shield up strained her focus and made her head hurt, but she eventually accomplished it.

The fact that her shield was blocking their bullets did not dissuade the troops in the pillbox from continuing to fire long bursts from their machine gun in her direction. As she finally disengaged her parachute harness, the firing stopped. Had the gun overheated? Were they changing the belt of ammo? Or were they just waiting for her to sit up?

She did sit up, but kept her shield going. Shields were her specialty, and she could keep it going for a long time under small arms fire. The pillbox was further to her left than she thought, and she adjusted her shield to compensate.

Her mech, curled in a ball 50 meters away, she remembered from her briefing that its own strength would be capable of breaking the cargo straps, so she simply commanded it to rise. Two of the four straps snapped immediately, but the others held on a moment longer, keeping an arm and a leg from deploying properly. The mech flopped over on its side before righting itself as the final straps snapped free. The machine gun still had not opened fire again.

Hannah's first instinct was to bring her mech close and get it behind her shield, but she knew she relied on those too heavily. Instead, she sent the machine charging up the slope. It reached the pillbox and leaped to land on the roof of the low concrete structure. The autocannon was strapped across her mech's torso. When it was descending, it had been curled around it. Now she freed the weapon.

Standing at the bunker at point-blank range seemed like a poor plan, and Hannah had a better one. She leapt to her feet and tried to charge up the slope, but it turned into more of a stagger as her abused legs protested the sudden dash up a slope.

The machine gun finally opened up again as the golems finished reloading.

Hannah's shield strained as she approached the pillbox, the machine gun blasting into the wall of magic at point-blank range. She lifted her other hand and pictured the next piece of magic she was going to do. And then she waited.

The instant the firing let up, she dropped her shield and slammed forward with a narrowly focused force wave. The blast of magic hit the pillbox and funneled through the slot that the machine gun's snout poked out. She heard a crash from within the bunker. The gun barrel twitched and slewed to the side.

She took three steps forward quickly and threw another force wave through the opening. Then she ran the final ten steps, placed her hand right at the slot, and sent the strongest wave she could summon directly through.

There was a horrendous crash from inside the bunker and then silence. She peeked through the opening. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust from sunlight to shadow. Everything in the bunker was a twisted wreck. Tables, chairs, ammunition racks, and a shelf that had held a telephone were twisted up in a heap. Arms and legs of at least two golems stuck out of the pile.

She dropped her mech down beside her and went to search through the bags and packs strapped on its back and sides. Where had she left those grenades? She found the right satchel, dug out a hand grenade, and almost casually popped it. From pulling the pin, she tossed it almost casually through the opening. Then she dropped and plugged her ears.

Something whistled overhead and a fountain of dirt exploded a hundred yards away. It was time to seek cover. The best cover around, and the one that hopefully Frankenstein's forces would not be quick to shoot at, was the power plant itself.

Behind the pillbox was a wire fence, and beyond that, several meters of open ground before the brick walls of the power plant. Hannah climbed up onto her mech's shoulder. She ducked low as another mortar round came whistling in. This one was only slightly closer than the last.

They stomped through the fence, crashing it underfoot. Then took shelter against the side of the power plant's wall. From here the fortress was slightly out of sight around the corner. There were more pillboxes around the perimeter of the fence line. They all faced outward with a door on the inside of the fence itself. As Hannah noted this, the next one down the line's door opened and two golems came out. She tilted her autocannon up and fired. She missed low, but the high explosive round impacted the ground in front of them, and the shower of dirt and rocks exploded through them, ripping their bodies to pieces.

She guessed each bunker held two and didn't waste another shot on the bunker itself. Instead, she trotted down the length of the power plant wall. There was one more bunker along that stretch of fence line and then another at the corner. Both had doors facing inward. These doors were not armored against a one-pound cannon. She put a shot through each. Smoke and flame billowed out of both sides of the pillbox as the explosive round cooked off all the ammunition inside.

She was left with only a few bullets as she reached the corner of the power plant. A mech stepped around the corner directly in front of her. She swung her gun and almost fired before she recognized Veronica's Hungarian machine. Veronica herself dismounted, stepping around the corner of the building just behind her machine.

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"Hello, Hannah. Fancy meeting you here."

"Have you seen the others?" Hannah asked.

"I saw Angelica touch down somewhere out there," she pointed in the open expanse of the valley to the east. "I was just watching Tamara buzzing around. I think she got two of them.”

Hannah turned and scanned the valley, looking for any sign of her commander.

"Should we wait for them?" she asked.

Just then, she caught sight of a flicker of movement in the distance that might have been a parachute wrapped around a power line. From a distance, the valley looked perfectly flat, but it was actually rolling grassland.

Across the valley, she could see Russian airships cresting the ridge. The rest of their assault had finally arrived.

Hannah caught sight of the head and shoulders of a mech poking up from what might have been a stream bed or wash. They were moving north. A moment later, she lost sight. She thought it had been Angelica's mech but couldn't be sure.

A moment later, the mech rose up in full view and made a dash for the power plant. It was about 300 yards away when the mortar rounds started falling.

Hannah and Veronica waited. She winced at each new explosion, but none of them came near her commander. The only pillboxes facing her direction Hannah had already taken care of. So Angelica had no problem trotting up the slope near the power plant and smashing through the fence before joining the two of them in the partial shelter near the wall.

"You shouldn't have waited. We have to get in there and crack—" She broke off as a clap of thunder interrupted. They all turned and watched, awestruck, as a Russian airship exploded in a ball of billowing fire.

"Holy shit," Angelica exclaimed. "We have to get in here and—we have to destroy this power station immediately."

"But how did they—?" Veronica started to say.

"There's no time," Angelica cut her off.

Without waiting for further acknowledgment, she moved her mech forward and turned the corner of the power plant. Hannah hurried to follow her. On this, the north side of the building, there were massive doors for bringing equipment in or out. Angelica wasted no time before starting to kick at them. The door clanged and dented under the onslaught but still resisted. Hannah stepped up next to her and started punching the door along the edges. The metal rolling door crumpled bit by bit.

"Look out!" Hannah heard Veronica shout behind them, followed by a burst of gunfire.

Veronica's mech carried a multi-barreled machine gun. Its clatter roared to life. Hannah turned to see her hosing down the nearest bunker, whose door was open. The perforated remains of a pair of golems lay sprawled.

Hannah turned and raised her own autocannon. Several more bunkers lay around the perimeter of this side of the building. The one in the corner had already been destroyed, and Veronica had just killed the occupants of the nearest.

"Don't worry about those! We have to destroy the interior!"

Suddenly Tamara's mech came swooping down from the sky. She landed almost daintily a few meters away.

"Have you guys been having fun without me?"

“Just about to,” Veronica retorted. “Glad you could join us.”

The boom of a distant explosion rumbled across the valley.

Angelica took several steps back with her mech. She jumped off its shoulder before sending it charging forward. The mech rammed through the battered door with a rending crash and fell into the building.

As Angelica's mech fell to the ground in a crumple of crushed door, Hannah just stood mouth agape. Hannah just sat there on her mech with her mouth agape. She didn't know what was supposed to be in a power plant. She'd been waiting for whirling generators and strange machines. But not this strange. The room was full of bottled lightning. Massive glass cases reinforced by bronze straps, copper straps, reinforced by copper straps, stretched from floor to ceiling. Inside, each blinding light danced.

"What the hell?" Tamara said from behind her.

Hannah just shook her head. "This is impossible."

Angelica had peered around the door. Her face was tight and unreadable. "Possible or not, we have to destroy it."

"Um," Veronica interjected, "maybe we should move back? I just think releasing bottled lightning sounds like a bad idea if you're standing too close."

Angelica was chewing her lip but nodded. "Yeah, okay."

Angelica remounted her mech as it came out of the building, and then they all proceeded to put 100 meters between them and the strange sight. When they were well past the trampled fence and the smoking bunkers, they could still see the light dancing through the ruined doorway. Hannah couldn't take her eyes off of it. It was just so damn impossible. How the hell could lightning be kept in a jar?

"I don't think that's how physics is supposed to work," Veronica said to no one in particular. Tamara was muttering in some other language. Hannah thought it was a prayer.

"All right, hopefully that'll be enough," Angelica said. She did not sound at all sure. None of them made a move to lift their weapons for a long moment.

"Ah, hell, you only live once," Veronica said and raised her autocannon.

Boom, boom, boom. She sent three rounds through the open door, sweeping left to right.

The world exploded with the light of a million suns. Hannah ducked behind her mech's head and couched low. Her skin burned. The air crackled with something she could feel but not hear. And the sound? There was no sound. There was all the sound. The roar was so utterly deafening that later Hannah would have no recollection of what the sound had been. It was just a primal thunderclap that went on and on as if a single peal of primal thunder had clapped and forgot to stop. The sound just went on and on.

When she finally claimed to her senses—hands, ears, and aching and skin burning—she realized she was still clinging to the side of her mech. She tried to straighten, but all her limbs were clenched in agony. The building had peeled open like a rotten gourd dropped from a tower. It had simply burst.

They all stood there admiring the wreck. Another distant, barely heard explosion from across the valley brought Hannah back to her sense.

She was looking across the valley. There were two visible burning wrecks. The third airship was nowhere to be seen. As they watched, a Russian gunship buzzed down the center of the valley, cannons and guns blasting. The craft was miles away, and they couldn't see what it was shooting at.

Together, wordlessly, they all moved around to the east side of the power plant building. Smoke billowed out of the windows high on the side of the brick wall. The building shuddered, and pieces of debris blasted through as some equipment inside exploded. Something started whistling shrilly as steam was released under pressure.

They worked their way down that side of the building, putting a round through each of the bunkers. There were only two bunkers on this side of the building, and when they were smoking wrecks, the Polish Hussars moved out. There was a road and a parking lot on this east side of the power station. It headed along the side of the valley towards the fortress to the south.

As they left the area near the power plant, they were exposed to fire to the fortress itself, a massive edifice of concrete a half a mile to the south. The structure was made of ringed walls stacked up like a wedding cake. Gun emplacements poked out from each of the tiers. The ones that could face to the east were all pointed towards the ongoing battle over there.

As the Poles stepped out from cover, one of the gun emplacements on the first ring opened fire. The shell slammed into the ruined power station behind them.

"Hannah, give us a strong shield. Stay close and move fast," Angelica broke into a run, and the others all rushed to keep up with her.