We’re rounding another switchback turn when something like a scream pierces the night. The sound of tearing metal, shredding at the seams, shrieks around us. I look up to see a transport falling, tipping over and over, knocked out of its place halfway back the line. All seems to slow down as it comes into blinding focus, my senses narrowing to the transport spiraling in midair. The Montfort soldiers on board fight with their restraints, hoping to beat gravity. Another, a strongarm, grabs for the road edge. It slips through his fingers, the pavement cracking beneath his touch. The transport continues to fall, spinning on its axis. It can’t be an accident. The trajectory is too perfect.
It’s going to flatten us.
I barely have time to duck while my own transport lurches beneath me, our brakes squealing, trying to stop in time. Smoke burns from the tires as the brakes lock up.
The road jumps when the transport smashes down, and we smash into it. Tyton grabs the back of my suit, yanking me upward, while I snap my arms over my restraints, using my electricity to cut through the thick weave. We scramble forward as Tiberias and Evangeline’s transport smashes into our rear, pinning us between the fallen vehicle and theirs.
More screaming brakes and resounding crashes echo behind us, one after the other, a chain reaction of twisted engines and burned rubber. Only the last transports in the line, six or so, are saved from the onslaught. They’re able to brake in time to save their machinery.
I look back and forth, ahead and behind, not sure where to go. The fallen transport lies on its back, an overturned turtle. Davidson is already out of the lead, stumbling toward the soldiers crushed beneath the vehicle. Farley moves with him, gun ready in her hand. She drops to a knee, training her sights on the cliffs above us.
“Magnetrons!” Davidson roars, one hand raised for aid. He pushes out a palm, forming a clear blue shield along the deadly edge of the road.
Somehow Evangeline is already at his side, her hands dancing. She hisses as she raises the heavy transport off the road, revealing twisted limbs and a few flattened skulls seeping brain like popped grapes leaking juice. Davidson doesn’t waste time, lurching forward to pull survivors from beneath the floating transport.
Moving slowly, Evangeline lowers the transport again. With a twitch of her fingers, she rips off one of the doors, allowing those inside to tumble out. The soldiers are bloody and disoriented, but living.
“Get out of the way!” she snaps, waving them back from the transport. When they do, limping out of her path, she slaps her palms together in a resounding clap.
The transport does as she wills, crushing itself into a dense, jagged ball the size of one of its doors. She lets it drop with a crack. Only the glass and the tires fly in every direction, beyond Evangeline’s metallic control. One tire rolls down the road, an odd sight.
I realize I’m standing up on my pinned transport. Evangeline turns around, her armor reflecting the starlight. Despite Tyton next to me, I feel exposed. An easy target.
“Get the healers up here!” I shout, looking back along the line of crushed vehicles piled up beneath the arches. “And get some more light on the road!”
Above us, something flares, a rising beam like the sun. The work of shadows, no doubt, manipulators of light. It sends harsh light and harsher darkness dancing across us all. I squint and clench a fist, sparking some electricity of my own around my knuckles. Like Farley, I keep my eyes on the rocky ledges rising all around. If the raiders somehow have the high ground, if they’re above us, then we lose a great advantage.
Tiberias already knows that. “Eyes up, sights on the cliffs!” he shouts, his back to his transport. He too has a pistol in one hand, while flames twist around the fingers of the other. Not that the soldiers need such instruction. Anyone with a gun has it raised, fingers ready on triggers. We just need a target.
But the Hawkway is oddly silent, quiet except for the occasional shout and echo as orders pass along the line.
A dozen or so Montfort soldiers work their way down the zagging road, silhouettes in their black suits. They stop at each transport, using their abilities to try to pull apart the mashed vehicles. Magnetrons and strongarms, or the newblood versions of each.
Evangeline and her cousins stomp by below, focusing on extricating my transport from theirs.
“Can you fix it?” I call down.
She just sneers as she forces the twisted metal to slither apart. “I’m a magnetron, not a mechanic,” she grunts, shouldering between the wrecks.
Suddenly I wish for Cameron and her tool belt. But she is far away, out of danger with her brother back in Piedmont. I bite my lip, brain buzzing. This is a blatant trap, an easy one, leaving us vulnerable on the mountainside. Or just stuck here, while the raiders wreak havoc on the towns below, if not the city behind us.
Tiberias is thinking the same thing. He hastens to the edge of the road, looking down into the darkness. “Can you radio your settlements? They need to be warned.”
“Ahead of you,” Davidson barks back. He crouches over one of the wounded soldiers, holding his arm while a healer works at the man’s broken leg. At the premier’s side, an officer speaks rapidly into her communications gear.
Tiberias frowns, turning from the cliff back to the carnage. “And send word back to the city. Call out a second detachment. Dropjets if they can get here in time.”
Davidson barely nods. I get the feeling he’s already done that too, but he holds his tongue, keeping his focus on the soldier beneath him. Healers, half a dozen or so, work diligently down the line, tending to anyone injured in the massive wreck.
“What about us? We can’t stay up here for long.” I slide off my vehicle, landing gently. It feels better to be on solid ground. “Something tipped that transport.”
Still on the roof, Tyton braces his hands on his hips. He looks at the zagging road above, investigating the otherwise empty spot the first transport fell from. “Could be a small-charge mine. Detonated at the right moment, it could flip a vehicle.”
“Too clean,” Tiberias growls. He paces along the road, his entire body on edge. His Lerolan guards follow him a little too closely, almost catching his heels. “Coordinated. Someone’s up here with us. We need to get down before they strike again. We’re sitting ducks.”
“Sitting ducks on the edge of a cliff,” Evangeline adds. She kicks at her own transport in frustration, putting a solid dent in the already crumpled front. “We can get the working transports up front. Load them as much as we can.”
Tiberias shakes his head. “It’s not enough.”
“It’s something,” I snap at him.
“We’re only a few thousand feet up now. Some of the regiment can start running, get to the ground,” Davidson says, helping one of the soldiers limp away from the head of the line. His communication officer follows, still jabbering into her radio. “The outpost at Goldengrove has transports. It isn’t far from the foot of the mountain.”
On the ground, Farley whirls, lowering her gun in her haste. “You want us to split up?”
“Not for long,” Davidson replies.
She pales, rising to her feet. “But long enough if—”
“If?” he asks.
“If this is a trap. A feint. You got word from the towns that raiders were close. But where is the attack?” She gestures to the black horizon. “There isn’t one. Not out there.”