Pain.

  Sharp, sudden, a flash of cold that cut through the warmth like a blade. Xin gasped, blinking, his vision clearing. He looked down.

  H?kon was pressed against his chest, scales blazing midnight blue, his tiny body rigid with effort. Frost crystals spread from where the Diabolisk touched him, climbing up his jacket like frozen veins.

  "Hjarta Kyrr," H?kon whispered, his voice cracking with strain. "Heart calm. Magic HAW-koon learned in sleep! HAW-koon help Pappa now!"

  The clarity of cold cutting through Ysolde's pheromone fog.

  "A new Lunar spell…you taught yourself…" Xin pulled his hand away from the hatch. His fingers were shaking.

  The cold burned, but it was a clean burn, pushing back the cotton-soft haze that had wrapped around his thoughts.

  "Good boy." His voice came out rough, broken. "You're such a good boy, H?kon!"

  The Diabolisk sagged against him, exhausted. "Demon Lady try to steal Pappa. HAW-koon not let her!"

  Outside, Ysolde's expression shifted. The smile was gone, replaced by something colder. More interested.

  "Do I sense a Jokull whelp inside that siege tank?" Her voice carried through the viewport glass, somehow intimate despite the distance. "Come out, little one. Mother Ysolde wishes to see you."

  The Kraken drifted closer. Through the viewport, Xin could see it clearly now—a nightmare of reddish-brown flesh, its bulbous head crowned with three orange eyes that pulsed with malevolent light. Octopus-like arms coiled beneath it, each one lined with suckers.

  "H?kon." Xin set the Diabolisk on his shoulder and climbed over Chen's catatonic form. "I need you to do something for me."

  "HAW-koon help Pappa!"

  "The turret up there. The gun." Xin settled into the driver's seat, hands finding the controls. The Genbu's systems were still linked to his Watch. "I'm going to drive. You're going to shoot."

  H?kon's sapphire eyes went wide. "HAW-koon shoot big boom-boom?!"

  "Yes. The targeting system will show you where to aim. Green circles, see them? You just have to press the trigger when I tell you."

  "But…HAW-koon small."

  "You're exactly the right size." Xin pulled up the targeting interface on the turret's secondary controls, rerouting them to elder-friendly settings—somehow compatible for children in this case. Large buttons. Simple commands. Bright colors. "And you've got the best eyes in this whole transport. You can do this."

  H?kon's scales flickered uncertainty, then settled into determined silver-blue.

  "Is okay. HAW-koon try. For Pappa! For Sky Lady!" The baby Radi-Mon scrambled up to the turret position, his small claws finding grip on the ladder rungs.

  Xin gripped the steering column and pushed the accelerator.

  Nothing happened.

  He pushed harder. The engine whined, coughed, then stalled completely.

  "Come on, come on—" His fingers flew across the control panel, searching for the ignition sequence. Military vehicles weren't like civilian autocabs. There were safety protocols, startup procedures, probably a dozen things he was doing wrong.

  [GENBU REBOOT SEQUENCE INCOMPLETE]

  [DRIVER AUTHENTICATION REQUIRED]

  "Authentication?" Xin's voice cracked. "I don't have…"

  The Kraken hit them.

  The impact threw Xin against his restraints. Metal screamed as tentacles wrapped around the Genbu's hull, suckers latching onto the armored plating with wet, grinding sounds. Through the viewport, he could see one massive arm coiling around the turret, blocking H?kon's field of fire.

  "Pappa! HAW-koon can't see! Big arm in way!"

  "Hold on, buddy, I'm trying to—"

  The Genbu lurched sideways. The Kraken was lifting them—actually lifting an eighty-ton siege tank off the ground. Warning lights flooded the cockpit. Structural integrity alerts screamed.

  [HULL BREACH IMMINENT - SECTIONS 3, 7, 12]

  [TURRET ROTATION: BLOCKED]

  [RECOMMEND IMMEDIATE EVACUATION]

  "Struggle all you like," Ysolde's voice drifted through the chaos, amused. "My pet enjoys playing with its food."

  Xin's mind raced. Driver authentication. No way he'd have military credentials, but his Watch was still interfaced with the Genbu's systems.

  His fingers danced across the holographic display. Lines of code scrolled past. He'd spent five years writing quantum algorithms at ZenFu DS. This was just another system. Just another problem to solve.

  [AUTHENTICATION BYPASS: 23%...]

  [AUTHENTICATION BYPASS: 47%...]

  The Kraken squeezed. Armor plating groaned. A rivet popped somewhere above, pinging off the interior wall.

  [AUTHENTICATION BYPASS: 89%...]

  [AUTHENTICATION BYPASS: COMPLETE]

  [WELCOME, OPERATOR: ZHI-XIN WU]

  [ENGINE: ONLINE]

  The Genbu roared to life.

  Xin slammed the accelerator. The treads spun wildly, catching nothing but air. They were still suspended in the Kraken's grip.

  But the sudden movement made the creature's arms slip. Just enough.

  "H?kon! The arm blocking you—can you hit it?"

  "Is too close! Green circle not here!" The Diabolisk's tiny voice was laced with panic.

  "Actually—just shoot where you see it!"

  The turret barked. The shot went wide, punching through empty air.

  "HAW-koon sorry, Pappa!"

  "It's okay, try again! Lead the target—I mean, guess where it's going to be, and shoot!"

  "Guess? Like whack-a-mole game?"

  "Yep! Like that Whac-A-Mole machine we played last year."

  Suddenly, panic and fear were miraculously gone from from H?kon's voice. His little form perked up with enthusiasm. "HAW-koon like whack-a-mole! This fun!"

  Another shot. This one grazed a tentacle, tearing a bloody furrow through reddish flesh. The Kraken shrieked—a sound like tearing metal—and its grip loosened further.

  The Genbu dropped.

  They hit the street hard, shocks screaming in protest. Xin's teeth clacked together. But they were moving now, treads biting into cracked pavement, the tank lurching forward like a wounded animal.

  "Sergeant Haylen!" He keyed the comm '55-Devadatta' with shaking fingers. "Yau and Chen are down. We need support!"

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  "Riding the Genbu, engineer?" Haylen's voice came back sharp, punctuated by gunfire. "Fong, Reyes, Ahmed, concentrate fire! Keep the Kraken off the Genbu!"

  Through the side viewport, Xin glimpsed three Blackcoats in black greatcoats taking positions behind overturned vehicles, their Kowloon-7 Gauss Rifles barking. Kinetic rounds sparked off the Kraken's hide, most bouncing harmlessly away, but a few found the softer flesh between tentacles.

  The creature turned, momentarily distracted.

  "Now, H?kon! While it's looking away!"

  "HAW-koon smash!" The turret swung as H?kon's small claws found the trigger.

  This time, the burst caught the Kraken square in the side. Black fluid sprayed. One of its arms went limp, dragging on the ground.

  "HAW-koon hit! HAW-koon hit ugly many-arms!"

  But Ysolde the Elder Draug strode forward, one clawed hand raised as she intoned in J?turmál. "Lykta af tessari tík!"

  Xin watched in horror as two of the Blackcoats simply stopped firing. Their rifles dropped, their faces went slack as they began drooling.

  "Breathe me in, little soldiers." Her voice was honey and venom. "You don't want to fight anymore."

  "Resist her!" Haylen's voice crackled desperately over the comm. "Short breathes, make distance—Fong! FONG!"

  One of the entranced Blackcoats turned his rifle on his own squadmates.

  Haylen shot him in the shoulder before he could fire. The man crumpled, the spell broken by pain.

  But the damage was done. The defensive line was crumbling.

  Bone Fiends poured through the gap. A dozen of them, maybe more, their pale bodies charging forward on too-thin legs. They swarmed toward the surviving Blackcoats, toward the Genbu.

  "Pappa, scary dogs coming!"

  "I see them!" Xin wrenched the steering column, trying to bring the tank around. But the turn was too slow. Too wide.

  A Bone Fiend leaped onto the hull. Through the viewport, Xin saw its red eyes, its needle teeth scraping against the glass. Then another. And another.

  "They're climbing on us." Xin said out loud.

  The turret couldn't depress low enough to hit targets on their own hull. H?kon fired anyway, the shots going high, cutting down Fiends still on the ground but doing nothing about the ones already attached.

  Haylen's order came through static. "All units, prioritize the hostiles on the Genbu. Shoot them off!"

  Rifle fire rattled against the hull. Xin flinched at each impact, unable to tell friendly fire from enemy claws. A Bone Fiend's face appeared in the driver's viewport, upside down, jaw hinging open—

  A gauss round punched through its skull. It slid off the glass, leaving a smear of black.

  "You're welcome, Engineer!" Haylen's voice, closer now. She must have moved to cover their position.

  But Ysolde was still coming. Still smiling. And behind her, the wounded Kraken was recovering, its damaged arms already knitting themselves back together with horrible wet sounds.

  "Interesting resistance," the Elder Draug purred. "But ultimately futile. You cannot fight desire, little ones."

  Another wave of pheromones rolled over them. Even through the Genbu's air filters, Xin felt it—that warmth, that softening of will. His hands loosened on the controls.

  "Pappa." H?kon's voice was strained. "Hjarta Kyrr!"

  Cold bloomed in Xin's chest. Frost raced up his arms, across his face, crystallizing on his glasses. The clarity returned, sharper this time, edged with something like anger.

  You will not take me. You will not take my son.

  "H?kon." His voice was steady now. Calm. "I have an idea. It's going to be…scary."

  "HAW-koon not scared. HAW-koon very brave!"

  "I know you are." Xin pushed the accelerator to the floor. "Keep shooting. Don't stop no matter what."

  The Genbu surged forward. Not toward escape. Toward the Kraken, now drifting closer to the ground in its wounded state.

  The targeting system screamed warnings. Collision alerts. Impact calculations. Xin ignored them all, his eyes fixed on the massive creature ahead, on its bulbous head with those three burning orange eyes.

  Eighty tons of armored siege tank. Forty kilometers per hour. Mass times velocity equals—

  "Pappa, we going to ugly many-arms!"

  "I know. Fire now, buddy!"

  Twenty meters. The Kraken realized what was happening. Its arms rose to intercept, to catch, to crush—

  H?kon fired. Round after round, the turret howling, brass casings raining down inside the transport. He wasn't aiming for center mass anymore. He wasn't aiming at all. But the Kraken's arms rising to block the bullets were exactly what Xin wanted.

  The first burst tore through a reaching limb. The second shredded another. The Kraken's defenses, already weakened by Haylen's squad, couldn't reform fast enough.

  Ten meters.

  Five.

  Impact.

  The collision threw Xin forward against his restraints. His glasses flew off. Metal screamed as the Genbu's reinforced prow punched into the Kraken's body. Treads churned, grinding through flesh and bone and whatever else made up a Fenris Radi-Mon's internal structure.

  The Kraken thrashed. Arms slammed against the hull, denting armor, cracking viewports, one arm flailing wildly.

  Xin kept his foot on the accelerator.

  The engine roared protest. The treads slipped, caught, slipped again. Black fluid sprayed across the viewport, obscuring everything.

  Then, finally, the Kraken stopped moving.

  The Genbu ground to a halt, half-buried in the creature's corpse.

  Silence. Or something like it. The ringing in Xin's ears drowned out everything else.

  "H?kon?" His voice was a croak. "H?kon, are you okay?"

  A small head poked down from the turret position. Scales flickering between exhausted brown and triumphant gold. "HAW-koon okay. HAW-koon...HAW-koon win?"

  "Yeah, buddy." Xin found his glasses on the floor, cracked but functional. He put them on with trembling hands. "We've won."

  Through what remained of the viewport, he watched Ysolde's reaction.

  The Elder Draug's amber eyes swept over the Kraken's remains—the scattered arms, the crushed body, the black blood pooling on the street.

  Something flickered across her perfect features. Surprise, perhaps. Or the faintest hint of respect.

  "Impressive," she said, her voice carrying across the sudden quiet. "A Jokull whelp and a human weakling in some hybrid Martian tank. I shall remember this."

  "We've got plenty more where that came from." Haylen's voice cut through, ragged but defiant. The Sergeant had taken a position behind a fallen pillar, her rifle trained on the Draug. Three Blackcoats stood with her, bloodied but standing.

  Ysolde's laugh was silk over broken glass. "I grow bored of this appetizer." She turned, platinum hair fluttering in the wind, and began running on four.

  Xin stared. The female Draug was running on four, like a large hound in alluring humanoid form.

  But it wasn't long before Ysolde vanished from sight.

  Haylen called over the comm. "All units, report status!"

  From behind, the inn's front door burst open.

  Iron Roach emerged, and Xin barely recognized him. Gone was the bartender with black jacket. Roach was now in a dark red leather jacket that hung open over a bare chest, silver chain necklace glinting against scarred skin, round red-tinted glasses catching the firelight. His silver-gray hair, usually slicked back behind the bar, now stood up in wild curls. Metal studs dotted his jacket's collar.

  The double-barreled shotgun in his hands was enormous. He pumped it once, racked a shell, and fired into a Bone Fiend that had been skulking behind a burning autocab.

  "Get off, you fuckface!" He advanced, firing with each step, each blast dropping another Fenris creature. The remaining Bone Fiends, already demoralized by their Kraken's death, scattered before him like roaches from sudden light.

  Sigrun appeared at the Genbu's side viewport, her ivory face streaked with sweat, blonde hair blowing in the midnight breeze, Járn the Thermal Axe still in her grip. Her nordic blue eyes found Xin's through the mildly damaged viewport.

  "You're alive," she said. It wasn't quite a question.

  "Barely." Xin managed a weak smile. "H?kon did most of the work."

  "HAW-koon smash ugly many-arms!" The Diabolisk scrambled down from the turret, scales now glowing bright gold. "Pappa drive, HAW-koon shoot! We team!"

  Marcus and Jabari appeared behind Sigrun, both looking worse for wear. The Stalwart's silver white armor was scored with claw marks, his shield dented in three places. Jabari had a gash across his forehead that was still bleeding sluggishly, but his eyes were sharp as he placed a Medi-Vap inhaler to his lips.

  "That was Ysolde, one of the six Elder Draugs serving Skarn." Marcus asked, his eyes scanning the street. "Are your men tracking her, Sergeant?"

  "The Draug's gone northeast," Haylen answered, approaching the group. She looked at the Kraken's corpse, at the Genbu buried in its flesh, at Xin and H?kon inside. Something shifted in her expression, like respect. "Toward the Poison Dragon Flute Motel, by the looks of it."

  "We go after that bitch, then." Sigrun's voice was flat. The same tone she'd used in the Red Rabbit Warren, when she'd fought all the monsters next to Xin and H?kon. "She doesn't get to stay cozy."

  "No. The Fenris is likely nesting, if that bloody motel's where they've retreated to." Marcus added, his armor clanking.

  Xin looked at the Kraken's arm hanging limply through the transport's breached hull. At the fires burning all around them.

  Then at Chen, still catatonic in the corner. Xin spoke. "Sergeant Haylen, I have Chen here in the cockpit. Still alive, but…"

  "Xin, can you move this thing?" Sigrun's asking pulled him back to reality.

  "Yep! The Genbu's still mobile," he said, running a quick diagnostic with his Nucleus Watch. "No major damage found. If I can reverse us out of... this..." He gestured vaguely at the Kraken corpse. "We can pursue."

  "Do it." Haylen's order was clipped. "Reyes, Ahmed, get Chen out of the Genbu. Stay here with a medical unit."

  "Aye, aye, Sergeant." One of the Blackcoats said as he approached the Genbu.

  "Constables, with me! We're moving."

  Iron Roach had finished clearing the immediate area. He approached the Genbu, shotgun resting on his shoulder, red lenses reflecting the flames.

  "Kid." His gravelly voice cut through. "You drive that thing into the Kraken?"

  "It seemed the right move at the time."

  Roach stared at him for a long moment. Then, slowly, the corner of his mouth twitched upward.

  "Shazmeen's going to kill me for the mess. Get out of here before I change my mind about liking you."

  Xin engaged reverse. The Genbu's treads whined, caught on something wet, then found traction. Slowly, horribly, they backed out of the Kraken's corpse, trailing viscera and black fluid.

  Nearby, at the gunner's seat, H?kon left the control panel behind and pressed against the viewport, watching the dead monster recede, his small snout fogging the glass.

  "Pappa."

  "Yeah, buddy?"

  "Next time, HAW-koon drive. Is okay?"

  Despite the terror, the exhaustion, the impossible night still stretching before them, Xin laughed. "We'll see."

  The rear doors banged open. Boots on metal. Sigrun was first back in, Járn's thermal core powering down with a soft hiss as she secured it at her belt. Marcus followed, his dented shield clanging against the bench as he dropped onto a seat. Jabari slid in next, already reloading Oya, the gash on his forehead crusting over.

  Haylen and her surviving Blackcoats filed in next, faces grim. Constables entered last, armor clanking.

  "Everyone in?" Xin called back.

  "Go," Haylen ordered. "Before she gets too far ahead."

  The Genbu's engine roared as Xin pointed them northeast, following Ysolde deeper into the burning city. Behind them, Iron Roach was already shouting orders, organizing fire suppression, securing the perimeter. The Slumbering Mantis would survive tonight.

  Whether they would was still an open question.

  Sigrun moved to the front of the transport, settling into the seat beside the driver's console. Close enough that Xin could smell the smoke and blood on her, the faint trace of lavender beneath it all.

  "Stay close to me this time," she said, quiet enough that only he could hear.

  He gripped the controls tighter.

  "I will."