“Tear down the road.” Angron rammed both hands into a load-bearing column.
Concrete crumbled in his palms, and rebar groaned as it was stretched to its limit, emitting a piercing screech.
The entire building began to shudder from its foundations.
Dust spewed from the window openings like the dying breath of a colossal beast.
Static flooded the communicator.
The voice of a tech-slave broke through in fits and starts.
“The western casualty zone is evacuating!” “The granary’s outer wall has been breached!” “The jetbikes are too fast!
Our guns can’t track them!” Angron did not let go.
The distant whine of anti-grav engines drifted along the perimeter of the Bloody Sand Arena.
One moment to the left.
The next to the right.
High-pitched, swift, and light.
Like a swarm of insects burrowing through the marrow of bones.
Angron looked up.
Two high-rise buildings squeezed the street from both sides, bridged by an abandoned aqueduct.
The bridge’s body was rusted black, with several thick power conduits dangling beneath it.
Further ahead lay a winding, narrow street, its surface littered with burned-out hover-cars, half-collapsed billboards, and the shattered wreckage of shield-cars from the recent clash.
The jetbikes could run.
Because the road was still clear.
Angron tensed his arms.
The load-bearing column was ripped halfway open, and the building’s frame tilted toward the center of the street.
The aqueduct above sagged under the strain, its mounting bolts snapping off and throwing sparks as they pelted the pavement.
It hadn’t collapsed yet.
Not enough.
He let go of the column and sprinted across the street.
The white-cloaked commander was still retreating.
His command vehicle fell back slowly, as if deliberately baiting the distance just within Angron’s reach.
The shield-wall retreated to the end of the street, while jetbikes repeatedly dashed out from side alleys, taking a bite out of the Bloody Sand Arena’s western flank before quickly veering away.
A jetbike charged out of a diagonal street.
A melta-pistol flared, its red-and-white beam grazing past Angron’s ribs.
Seared flesh scorched, black smoke curling from his dark-green muscles, but the wound rapidly closed.
The rider didn’t stop.
The vehicle carved an arc in front of him, hurtling toward the distant line of wounded.
Angron’s boot shattered the street pavement.
The residual shards in the back of his head throbbed violently.
*Chase them.* *Catch them.* *Tear them to pieces.* His body leaned forward an inch.
In the next breath, the cold, rational judgment belonging to his past life as an Earthling dragged him back.
The jetbike was bait.
If he chased it, he would rip one rider apart.
But a whole crowd on the western side would die.
Angron grit his teeth, turned around, and stared at the high-rises lining both sides of the street.
The rage was still burning.
He channeled that fire into his arms, slamming them into the ground-floor facade of the building across the street.
Boom!
A massive section of the wall caved in.
The load-bearing beams inside were exposed, their thick metal skeletons warped by the shockwave.
The bodyguard jetbikes immediately turned.
Realizing Angron wasn’t pursuing the white-cloak, they began to close in on him.
Several melta beams sliced into the building, melting through the outer walls and tracing glowing lines through the dust.
Angron grabbed the load-bearing beam.
Melta beams struck his back, blasting away large chunks of charred flesh.
He didn’t look back.
He tore outward with both arms.
The beam snapped.
The entire building sagged downward.
Several jetbikes surged into the ground-floor lobby.
Their headlights swept over the broken pillars, and their melta-guns locked onto Angron’s back.
They wanted to force him to let go, force him to turn around, force him to keep chasing and fighting them.
Angron whipped around, grabbing the rear of the nearest jetbike.
Its anti-grav engine shrieked.
The vehicle surged forward in a frenzy, dragging him along and plowing two deep trenches into the ground.
Angron slammed his arm down.
The jetbike was smashed into the pavement.
Its front end exploded, and the rider was thrown from the wreckage, snapping a flight of stairs in half.
Another jetbike skimmed over his head.
The ceiling was too low; the vehicle scraped against the bottom of a girder, sending a shower of sparks flying along its chassis.
The rider tried to climb, but Angron had already ripped out the broken beam and swung it horizontally.
The broken beam tore through the lobby.
Pillars snapped in sequence, and half the floor let out a low groan, collapsing outward toward the street.
The bodyguard riders finally panicked.
The jetbikes spun around and rushed for the exit.
Outside the exit, the tilted building across the street had also begun to crumble.
The abandoned aqueduct was dragged down and snapped by both falling structures.
A colossal, rusted iron pipe fell from midair, crashing down right in the middle of the narrow street.
CRASH!
The street was completely cut off.
The leading jetbike braked hard, its nose nearly slamming into the rusted pipe.
The vehicles behind couldn’t stop in time, piling into one another in a chaotic tangle.
Their anti-grav engines interfered with each other, causing the chassis to fishtail wildly in the narrow street.
Above, severed power lines dangled down, raining electric sparks onto the street like a shower of fire.
Angron walked out from the dust of the collapsing building.
He blocked the other end of the narrow street.
The walls on either side were barely a shoulder’s width away; the low-hanging lines swayed over his head.
Having lost their speed, the jetbikes could no longer glide past along the edges of the street.
The riders raised their weapons.
Angron grabbed an overturned jetbike, swinging it backward along with the barely breathing rider still attached to it.
The chassis smashed into a second jetbike, its melta-battery deforming as a brief red glare flared within the cracks.
An explosion engulfed the narrow street.
Flames slammed into the building walls on both sides and rolled back, swallowing all the remaining bodyguards.
A rider leapt from the flames, his jump-pack flaring as he tried to escape over the broken bridge.
Angron ripped down a nearby power line.
The line whipped down along with its steel support frame, striking like a lash of electrical fire and smashing the rider back to the ground from midair.
His power armor cracked.
Angron stomped down.
The street shuddered.
Another engine whine was cut short.
The heavy stubbers atop the Bloody Sand Arena’s walls finally pinned down both exits.
Ammo belts rattled against the ruined walls as rounds thudded into the wreckage of the jetbikes, pinning the crawling bodyguards back into the flames.
The white-cloaked commander’s frontal forces began to withdraw.
Angron stepped out of the narrow street’s mouth.
Flames still clung to his body.
Seared skin cracked open, and fresh flesh pushed through the blackened crust.
Blood, dust, and coolant mingled on his chest, trickling down his abdominal muscles.
He looked toward the low-hovering command vehicle in the distance.
The white-cloak was looking at him too.
This time, no jetbikes circled out from the side streets.
The low-altitude path had been completely blocked by the collapsed bridge.
The narrow street was choked with debris.
The gunfire on the western flank began to subside, and brief cheers erupted from the outer walls of the Bloody Sand Arena, only to be quickly suppressed by Oenomaus.
“Stop shouting!” “Fortify the walls!” “Scavenge any guns that still work!” Angron walked forward, listening to those voices.
The bodyguard shield-wall closed ranks again, forming a barrier in front of the command vehicle.
Their energy fields locked together in a blue arc, and melta-guns protruded through the gaps in the shields.
Angron grabbed the chassis of a burned-out hover-car, dragging it toward the shield-wall.
The chassis scraped against the pavement, throwing a trail of sparks.
The melta-guns fired in unison.
The beams struck the chassis, molten metal dripping from the newly scorched holes.
Angron pressed on, pushing the red-hot scrap metal before him.
The shield-bearers began to fall back.
One step.
Two steps.
Their formation remained intact, but their footing was already faltering.
The white-cloaked commander raised his hand.
He did not point at Angron this time.
He gestured upward.
The two scout craft immediately ascended.
The heavy rumble of engines echoed from further up in the sky.
Angron looked up.
Above the smoke and dust, dark shadows were expanding.
The gunfire from the walls of the Bloody Sand Arena faltered for a fraction of a second.
The first gunship broke through the shroud of smoke.
Its belly turret rotated, and a red targeting laser swept across the main gate of the Bloody Sand Arena, across the western granary, and across the lower-city crowds gathering toward the arena.
A second gunship loomed from behind the high-rises.
A third followed close behind.
They hovered high above, far further out of reach than the anti-grav jetbikes.
The white-cloaked commander’s voice boomed from the loud-hailer.
Cold, flat, devoid of any emotion.
“Target change.” “Do not engage Angron.” “Strike the people behind him.” The bellies of the gunships glowed red.
Frantic shouts echoed from within the walls of the Bloody Sand Arena.
Angron stood at the mouth of the burning narrow street, staring up at the sky.
He had just torn down their path on the ground.
Now, the High Riders had taken the battlefield to the skies.
The pain in the back of his head continued to throb.
The fury in his chest sank, pressing down even heavier.
Angron bent down and grabbed the broken steel girder of the aqueduct at his feet.
The girder was incredibly long.
Half a rusted iron pipe was still attached to its edge.
He hoisted the girder onto his shoulder.
The pavement cracked beneath his boots, bit by bit.
The cannon of the lowest gunship began to charge with light.
Angron locked his gaze onto it.
Without blinking.