I loved the sound of the Hammerhead, the venomous buzz of the electromagnet as it accelerated a shard of metal into an unstoppable force of destruction. There was something viscerally satisfying about the sound design of human-made guns; they all fired with a sharp kick like a knife-tipped stiletto.

The sound was always cut off by the cacophony of twisting metal and shattering glass that followed it.

The Hammerhead punched a hole in the centre of the door, and then the rest of the door, frame included, followed the shot across the hall, smashing into the wall on the other side of the landing with a clash that shook the surrounding rooms.

My translator didn't pick up what exactly the Ottinio up the stairs from us said, but you could recognize 'fuck' in any alien dialect.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes briefly, listening to the hail of weapons fire from down the hallway as I put the Hammerhead back by my hip and took up the Fotuan riles. There was a mix of blunt, ancient-sounding weapons and the single staccato rhythm of a modern energy rifle.

Victoria was staring at me, holding her gun in the closest thing she knew to a 'ready' position. I glanced down at her hip; she still wore a civilian shield. It would be enough for some of the guards' archaic weapons, but the energy weapons would give either of our shields a hard time. I waved her down; I would need to go first.

I put my weight onto my back foot to spring forward into a roll when the sound of grinding metal cut me off. The back door into the room swung open, a deluge of arctic water pouring in with it. Several shots rang out from the doorway, two slamming into the containers on the back wall and one crashing into my chest; my shield spread it out like a thumping bass.

The Ottinio that had opened the door dropped from the one shot I got off before the water smashed into my knees and took them out. I dropped into the water just in time to hear the Ottino that had been shot me cry out.

Three red bolts flew across my vision, diffused by the rushing water hovering half a centimetre above my skin, resting on my shield. The floor shook, and I couldn't tell if it was the building or just this room.

The massive boot of an Ottinio tamped down beside my face as they ran across the room toward Victoria. There were two more flashes of diffused red. I shook my head.

She didn't know how to use a gun.

I tore myself out of the water just as the Ottinio closed on Victoria, who'd hopped onto the desk. There were shouts in the hallway as those on overwatch were coming down the stairs toward us. Victoria was too close for me to try shooting as I stood up.

Yellow light erupted into the room, and the charging Ottinio screamed as they stopped a foot short of grabbing Victoria off the desk. Arctic water hissed against the hard light harpoon piercing the Ottinio's tail.

With the Ottinio stopped half a foot short of her, Victoria picked her gun back up and pointed it toward them. There was a breath, a pause where the only noise was footsteps on the stairs.

I used my one free hand to put three shots in the spine of the Ottinio, or at least where the spine should have been; I didn't understand their biology. I tried to catch Victoria's eyes but a massive hand-flipper slammed into my chest as the Ottinio whirled around as best they could. I only stayed standing courtesy of my white knuckle grip on the harpoon stabbing through tail into the floor.

A button on the side of the Ovishir weapon let the harpoon loose and started forging another out of hardlight as the first began to crumble into motes of energy. The Ottinio grabbed at me again, and I went to skirt back from him, but the water caught my legs fast.

The Ottinio's massive hand grabbed the side of my head but fell limp just as it did. The whir of Victoria's gun cooling down from burst fire was almost smothered by the water and shouting.

Her eyes bordered on blue as they stared at the falling Ottinio, the silver, for once, getting smothered. She lowered the gun, the barrel shaking alongside her hands.

"Sorry, I should have had him," I offered. She barely nodded. It was something, but it wasn't much. "Watch that door," I ordered, pointing to the half-flooded way the last Ottinio had come through. I doubted anyone else was coming from that way, but she needed something to think about other than this.

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The first was hard; each time got a little easier until you understood the calculus of 'us or them.'

She hadn't hired me to send her down that path. I had to do better than that.

The hardlight hissed as it recharged, touching the water and superheating it into steam. The footsteps outside had stopped, likely in reaction to the sudden calm in the room. "Think about the next thing you do," I called out into the hallway, "doubt we're worth it. We just want to go home."

I waited a moment for a response, but it was half a lie anyway; we needed to keep these Ottinio under the ice or at least away from us until we were in the air. If they agreed to let us walk, getting Musc's plane off the ground would be a completely different story.

"All right," I said after I'd waited long enough.

Tense seconds of silence.

Tearing the Hammerhead off my hip, I whipped my arm around the corner, aiming the Hammerhead up toward the ceiling. I shot and was right, the metal tearing through the roof into the room above us, turning half the stairway into a shrapnel-filled blender.

I slid out from behind the door, crouching low to the ground, barely above the water's surface as the first errant panic shots rang out in the hallway, crashing against metal and whizzing through empty air as the four guards tried to cover their faces from the shrapnel.

Pistol away, rifle out, but I didn't stop at one burst this time. I chose the Ottinio in the middle, the one with a proper weapon in his hands and held down the trigger, filling them with surgically thin bolts of laser light just as they attempted to shake sparks out of their vision. The Fotuan rifle hissed that it was overheating at me.

Piece of shit.

I slung the weapon back around and grabbed the hardlight harpoon again, kicking off the ground out of the water and charging up the stairs just as one of the Ottinio was getting his bearings. He raised his weapon to me. My shield could probably take it, but there was no reason to test that theory. I tapped the button on the side of the harpoon.

The hardlight construct flashed out of the barrel of the weapon, piercing the air, gun, hand, chest, and stairs with the sound of shearing metal. The body of the Ottinio followed with a sickening thunk.

I reached the group as the hardlight was still reconstructing. The larger Ottinio of the two left raised their weapon, and I lunged to their side, letting their shots empty uselessly down the hallway. As I was tumbling, I wrapped my fingers around the grip of the energy weapon the first Ottinio had been holding.

The sharp thumps of the heavy weapon swallowed all other sounds as I squeezed down the trigger, forcing the barrel toward the one that had just failed to shoot me. The thumps changed from shots smashing steel to squelches of tearing flesh.

There was a clatter behind me as the last Ottinio dropped their weapon and stared at me. The hardlight of the harpoon hissed between us as the third of four slumped to the ground, half creature, half minced meat.

I dropped the weapon I'd co-opted for the last kill and took a deep stabilizing breath as the building groaned again. I hadn't done as much damage as the Hammerhead, but I doubt any amount of fighting was good for the structure at this point. The Ottinio continued to stare at me. "Go," I hissed, pointing down the stairs toward the water. It looked like they could swim, at least. Better than putting him between us and freedom.

They looked down the stairs, then started to march down.

"Come on, Victoria," I called out, "we're clear."

Victoria came out of the room just as the Ottinio glanced at one of the guns on the ground and went to dive for it. Before I could raise my weapon, the entire hallway erupted into red light as Victoria held down the trigger—several shots shattered against my shield.

The Ottinio slumped onto the stairs, blood flowing down the steps and starting to join the slowly-rising water. Victoria hurried up the steps, taking a moment to carefully manoeuvre around the bodies, only to stare past me at the pile that I'd left. She swallowed. There was more steel back in her eyes. "Are you okay?" She asked after a moment.

"Fine," I answered first before adding, "you shot me."

"You're okay right?" she asked. I didn't respond verbally, instead just nodding. "Was he-"

"He was going for a gun," I confirmed, "seems to be a trend." The second part was more of a lie. I could never be sure that the first Ottinio I'd shot had been going to shoot me or not, but you could only wait so long in those circumstances.

For a moment, there was silence between us, and the crashing arctic base didn't interrupt; instead, there was just the sound of water.

"So now I've saved you twice?" she asked.

"You're kidding."

"Well-"

"I've lost more shield to-" I cut myself off. There wasn't a point in admonishing her right now. She'd tried to reach out with a joke, and I could be kind and accept that "talk to me when you catch up."

"Pardon?"

"I've handed you both of those so far," I pointed out, "if you want something without training wheels, I'm pretty sure we'll find it upstairs.

Vicotria's eyes darted across my face, trying to read whether I was serious or not. I don't know what she pulled from me, but she nodded after a second. "Just you watch, Old man," she answered after a moment. I could hear the attempted bravery in her voice, even on the other side of the translation.

The building groaned; there were two options up the stairs, either Yinde had chosen to cut his losses and was willing to let us get out of here with Musc, in which case we needed to assume that he'd warned people about us, and we needed to leave Mythellion.

The other option was that Yinde was up there with more Ottinio to try and keep us from taking off. If they were smart, they just would have ruined Musc's plane. Then again, choosing this fight hadn't been smart of them.

"You ready, Victoria?"

"As I'll ever be."