The twin outboard motors screamed over the crashing surf.
The Vanguard barge plunged into the heavy, black swells, throwing sheets of freezing saltwater over the rusted bow. Marcus wiped the ash and brine from his eyes, his grip white-knuckled on the railing.
The heat rolling off the coast of Naples was suffocating.
"JARVIS," Marcus yelled over the engine roar. "Give me a read on the shoreline!"
His Gold UI flickered wildly. Static tore across his vision in jagged white lines.
[Heavy thermal interference, Boss. The ambient temperature is spiking. It's like trying to scan the inside of a volcano. I can't get a clear lock on the automated batteries.]
Marcus swore under his breath. The massive, terraformed jungle covering the ruined city was fully ablaze. Chemical fire—bright, sickly green and orange—licked up the sides of suffocated skyscrapers.
Nero wasn't just defending the beach. He was cooking it.
Around the Vanguard barge, the "fleet" of the Styx was a disaster.
Dozens of mismatched scavenger boats, welded skiffs, and flat-bottomed dinghies bobbed violently in the heavy surf. They had no formation. They had no discipline. It was a panicked mob charging a fortress.
A rusted skiff to their left suddenly violently jerked sideways. Its single, sputtering engine died with a loud, metallic clank.
It spun sideways in the current, caught in the swell, drifting rapidly on a collision course with the Vanguard barge.
"Port side!" Marcia screamed, racking her shotgun. "They're going to ram us!"
The panicked scavengers on the dead skiff were waving their arms, screaming as they careened toward Marcus's heavy, iron-clad boat. If they hit, the Vanguard barge would capsize under Narcissus's immense weight.
Marcus didn't have time to shout orders to his helmsman.
He lunged toward the port railing. He leaned his upper body completely over the side, the freezing black waves biting at his naval coat.
The gold lines of his Neural Link flared against his temple.
"JARVIS! Max output to the left hand!" Marcus commanded.
[Routing power, Boss. Do not hold the charge.]
Marcus thrust his left hand toward the incoming skiff, less than ten feet away. He felt the familiar, terrifying burn of raw nanite energy spike up his forearm.
A visible, blue arc of electricity shot from his palm.
CRACK.
The EMP jolt slammed directly into the rusted, exposed engine block of the scavenger skiff. The dead motor violently shuddered. Sparks showered the screaming passengers.
The engine roared back to life, coughing black smoke.
The skiff surged forward, violently swerving away from the Vanguard barge, missing them by inches. The backwash from their prop sprayed Marcus in the face.
He pulled himself back over the rail, his left arm numb and smoking slightly.
"Keep your eyes forward!" Marcus roared at his helmsman. "Do not stop for anyone!"
They were three hundred yards from the ruined docks.
The water beneath them suddenly changed. The freezing black swells turned violent. Large, unnatural bubbles began to break the surface, hissing as they popped.
Steam rose from the ocean.
"The water is boiling," Lucilla whispered, her eyes wide. She was pressed flat against the floorboards, clutching the datapad to her chest.
"Terraforming vents," Marcus gritted his teeth. "Nero is venting the city's geothermal exhaust directly into the bay."
They were sailing into a kettle.
The heat was becoming unbearable. The fog burned away, revealing the jagged, rusted pylons of the Naples docks dead ahead. The jungle canopy above the concrete piers was thick with hyper-oxygenated vines, all glowing with that sickly chemical fire.
Two hundred yards.
The tree line above the docks suddenly erupted.
It wasn't the scattered crack of rifles. It was the deafening, rhythmic thumping of Board automated heavy-bolters.
THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD.
Thick, red tracer rounds tore through the steam. They didn't target the Vanguard barge. They targeted the largest cluster of scavenger boats to their right.
A flat-bottomed transport carrying thirty men simply disintegrated.
The heavy-bolter rounds ripped through the thin fiberglass hull like wet paper. The boat exploded into a massive fireball of screaming men, splintered wood, and burning fuel. The shockwave rocked Marcus's barge.
"Incoming!" Marcia yelled, dropping to a knee behind the rusted forward plating.
The automated turrets adjusted their firing arcs. A line of water explosions stitched across the bay, walking directly toward the Vanguard barge.
"Narcissus!" Marcus yelled.
The Iron Dog didn't need orders.
CLANG. HISS.
The twelve-foot Dreadnought stepped to the front of the barge. He didn't raise a weapon. He didn't take cover. He crossed his massive, anchor-chain arms over his steel chest and planted his hydraulic leg.
He became a walking bulkhead.
The heavy-bolter rounds hit them a second later.
Ping! CRACK! SPANG!
Anti-materiel rounds the size of Marcus's fist slammed into Narcissus's new armor. The impacts were deafening. Sparks showered the deck in blinding bursts.
The giant didn't take a single step backward. The thick battleship steel of his chest plate cratered, but it didn't pierce.
Marcus felt a surge of adrenaline cut through his fear. The Warlord's math was working. The Iron Dog was a goddamn juggernaut.
But the boat wasn't.
A stray bolter round slipped past Narcissus's massive frame.
It punched cleanly through the rusted side paneling of the barge, shrieking past Lucilla's head, and buried itself directly into the right outboard motor.
The engine exploded in a shower of grease and shrapnel.
The helmsman screamed, thrown backward onto the deck, his arm peppered with metal splinters.
The barge violently slewed sideways, losing half its power. They were fifty yards from the boiling, ash-covered beach, dead in the water.
"We're sitting ducks!" Marcia yelled, returning fire into the tree line with her shotgun, though it was useless at this range. "The left engine can't push his weight!"
She pointed at Narcissus.
Marcus didn't hesitate. They couldn't stay on the boat, and they couldn't swim in boiling water.
"Narcissus!" Marcus roared. "Over the side! Take the chain!"
The giant turned his massive head. He understood.
Narcissus grabbed the thick, rusted anchor chain bolted to the bow of the barge. He wrapped it twice around his massive forearm.
Then, the Dreadnought leaped.
SPLASH.
Twelve feet of iron and hydraulics hit the chest-deep, boiling water. Steam hissed violently off his hot armor.
Narcissus leaned forward, his massive hydraulic leg driving deep into the sandy bottom.
"PULL!" Marcus screamed.
The Iron Dog roared. A deep, mechanical, terrifying sound.
The pistons in his legs whined, a high-pitched scream of maximum torque. The anchor chain pulled taut, groaning under the immense strain.
Narcissus began to walk.
He literally dragged the fifty-ton salvage barge through the boiling surf, plowing through the water toward the beach while heavy-bolter fire continued to spark off his back.
"Cover him!" Marcus yelled, drawing his combat knife and a scavenged Board pistol.
Marcia stood up, exposing herself over the rusted railing, and laid down a suppressing field of buckshot toward the docks.
The bottom of the barge scraped hard against the sand.
They had hit the shallows.
"Out! Out!" Marcus yelled, vaulting over the side of the boat into knee-deep, scalding water.
He sprinted toward the rusted concrete pylons of the dock, his boots heavy with wet sand.
Two Board clone-troopers stepped out from behind a concrete pillar. They wore sleek, black environmental suits and leveled pulse-rifles at Marcus.
Marcus didn't slow down.
He tapped his temple. "JARVIS. Adrenaline spike."
[Spiking, Boss. Heart rate at 180.]
The world blurred. Marcus crossed the ten yards in a second, his nanite-enhanced speed a blur of motion.
The first clone fired. The pulse round grazed Marcus's shoulder, singing the heavy fabric of his naval coat.
Marcus slammed into the clone, driving his combat knife upward under the chin of the black helmet. Blood sprayed across his visor.
He ripped the knife free, spinning on his heel as the second clone raised his rifle.
A deafening BOOM echoed across the beach.
The second clone was thrown backward, his chest cavity caved in by a slug from Marcia's shotgun.
Marcia splashed out of the surf, racking another round. Lucilla scrambled out behind her, hyperventilating, clinging to the datapad.
Narcissus stomped onto the dry sand, dropping the heavy anchor chain. His armor was smoking, pockmarked with heavy dents, but he was fully operational.
They had a beachhead.
Behind them, the first wave of scavenger boats began to crash onto the sand, disgorging hundreds of screaming, terrified men into the chaotic firefight.
Marcus looked around. The air was thick with ash and the smell of burning plastic.
He pointed toward a massive, heavily reinforced concrete bunker sitting half-buried under the burning jungle canopy, a hundred yards up the beach. Thick, insulated pipes ran from the bunker into the city.
"There!" Marcus yelled to Lucilla. "That's the purification plant! You have to—"
[BOSS!] JARVIS screamed in Marcus's ear. The AI's voice was suddenly distorted, fracturing with static.
[Massive subterranean energy spike. Grid overload detected. He's closing the door!]
Marcus spun around, looking back at the ocean.
A deep, unnatural hum vibrated through the sand beneath their boots.
Thirty yards off the beach, where the boiling water met the deep, a series of hidden underwater terraforming vents suddenly blew their caps.
A massive wall of thick, green chemical liquid erupted from the ocean floor.
It hit the surface and instantly ignited.
WHOOSH.
A towering, unbroken wall of Greek Fire roared into the sky, fifty feet high, stretching across the entire mouth of the bay.
The heat wave hit them like a physical punch, knocking several scavengers to their knees.
Marcus stared at the roaring wall of flames.
It cut them off completely. The remaining scavenger boats couldn't get in. And the Vanguard couldn't get out. The Carrier was lost behind a curtain of fire.
The beach was trapped. An arena.
Static flooded Marcus's Neural Link.
[Warning...] JARVIS's voice broke into mechanical syllables. [Signal... lost. Offline.]
The gold lines on Marcus's temple faded. The tactical UI vanished from his vision. The world snapped back to harsh, terrifying analog reality.
Marcus was blind.
Then, cutting cleanly through the deafening roar of the flames, the crackle of burning jungle, and the screams of dying men, Marcus heard it.
It was crisp, clear, and perfectly amplified by hidden speakers hidden in the burning canopy above them.
The sound of a violin.
It was playing a slow, mocking rendition of a classical Roman sonata.
Marcus gripped his bloody combat knife.
Nero was waiting.