Malakor stood on the bridge of the *Sun's Mercy*, watching the mountain burn.
"Efficiency," Malakor noted. "The heresy is contained."
"Sir!" a sensor-officer shouted. "Energy spike detected! Massive magnitude! It's coming from inside the mountain!"
"Seismic?" Malakor asked.
"No, sir. Kinetic. It's... it's a launch signature."
Malakor leaned forward. "They have artillery?"
***
In the Boneyard, Kael screamed.
The Neural Interface was burning his mind. He was seeing through the Titan's sensors. He saw the rock above him. He saw the sky. He saw the golden hull of the Sun's Mercy.
LOCKED, the Titan whispered.
"Fire," Kael thought.
***
The top of Iron-Hollow disintegrated.
It wasn't a bomb. It was a barrel. A thirty-meter wide railgun barrel smashed through the peak of the mountain, shedding centuries of rock and ice.
The Sun's Mercy was directly in its path.
There was no sound. The projectile was moving too fast for sound.
A slug of dense, accelerated matter slammed into the underbelly of the Cruiser. It didn't explode. It punched through.
The shell entered the engine block and exited the bridge.
The Cruiser snapped in half.
The golden hull buckled, vented atmosphere, and then crumpled.
Malakor's world dissolved into fire and vacuum.
***
The shockwave knocked Valerius flat.
He looked up, ears ringing. The bombardment had stopped.
In the sky, a god was dying. The Spire Cruiser was falling, trailing a comet-tail of debris. It crashed into the Smog-Sea miles away, sending up a mushroom cloud that rivaled the refinery explosion.
The other two cruisers broke formation. They didn't engage. They panicked. They turned and fled, burning hard for altitude.
Silence returned to Iron-Hollow.
Then, the mountain grabbed. The recoil of the Titan cannon had shattered the remaining supports.
"Evacuate!" Valerius roared. "The mine is collapsing! Move!"
They ran.
Kael stumbled out of the service elevator, his nose bleeding, his arm smoking. Elric grabbed him.
"You did it," Elric screamed. "You shot the sky!"
"And brought the roof down," Kael wheezed. "Run."