The gun had been left two streets away because nobody wanted it in the photographs.
Sevrin had agreed. The angels were coming down through the night sky, and people were climbing onto bus shelters to see them. Light ran along the great wings in veins of violet and copper; the windows across the square filled with their colors. The black shapes at their centers were hard to look at directly. Pyramids, he thought, until one turned and showed him another dozen faces.
Someone behind him began to sing. He was smiling when the nearest angel spread its wings above the welcome platform.
The shutters beneath its body opened. Light struck the square.
Sevrin found himself underneath the platform, with his cheek against a bolt he had watched a workman tighten that morning. The singing had stopped. A length of red carpet hung through the broken boards and stirred against his face.
He tried to push himself up. The platform came down another inch.
“Don't,” said someone beside him. “It'll finish the job.”
Corporal Bera lay with one foot trapped beneath a crossbeam. Her radio handset was still clipped to her collar. Its little speaker was shouting at both of them.
Sevrin got an elbow under himself and looked out. A white furrow ran from the distant hills through the southern half of the square and on between the buildings. The angel hung above it. One vast ribbon of a wing passed through the smoke, dark purple along its edge and lit a brilliant green from within.
Then the defensive fire began to arrive.
He saw the rounds bursting against the wings. From the gun positions beyond the city, that was all there was to hit: layers of moving black armor, folded around the central body. The explosions left pale stains that vanished as the wings turned.
The angel drifted toward the station on the square's northern edge. People were running down the station steps. Its underground platforms were the nearest shelter. Sevrin watched a man come back up, catch someone by the sleeve, and pull them toward the entrance. Above them, the wings spread again.
From directly below, Sevrin saw something the distant gunners could not. Beneath the central pyramid, armored plates drew apart. Behind them was a deep chamber full of white light. Rings were turning inside it, each turning faster than the one around it.
The wings covered everything except that opening.
“Bera. Your radio.”
She unclipped the handset and gave it to him.
“Station entrance, clear it,” he said. “It's going to fire down the steps.”
There was no answer he could pick out of the shouting. The man at the entrance hauled his companion down past the first turn in the stairs. They vanished from sight. The steps disappeared in white light.
The blast passed over Sevrin's shelter. The bolt beside his cheek grew hot. When he could see again, the shutters had closed. Voices rose from below the station entrance, calling for people to keep moving. He watched the place where the plates had met as he gave Bera the handset, then started digging around her boot.
They got her out without lifting the platform. Sevrin pulled loose bricks from beneath her heel, and Bera drew her foot down through the gap, making a small, furious noise between her teeth.
She could stand if she leaned against something. Other people were crawling out of the rubble now. She called them over, found two who could help each other walk, and sent them toward the station's side entrance.
“Where are you going?” she asked Sevrin.
“For the gun.”
“They're putting everything into it.”
“From the wrong angle.”
He pointed up. The angel was passing over the roofs, its wings hanging low around the pyramid.
“It has to open to fire. Underneath. That's where I'll put it.”
Bera looked from him to the thing in the sky.
“You'll have to be right under it.”
“Yes.”
She handed him the small radio from her belt. “Use the company channel. I'll stay at the side entrance.”
The gun lay beside the wreck of its truck, one rail smoking gently where a strip of bunting had caught on it. Someone had fired it since the attack began. There were three darts left in the magazine and enough charge for all three, according to the green marks on the power block.
Sevrin pulled the sling clear of a wheel. He had carried that model for three years. With its long paired rails and thick power housing, it was longer than he was tall and heavier at the stock than anywhere else. Carry it too far forward and the power block banged his hip. Too far back, and the muzzle swung into the ground.
He worked his left arm through the sling, lifted with both hands, and got it across his chest. The weight settled onto his shoulder. His knees bent a little.
“I've got it,” he told Bera.
“Good. Half the city's on this channel.”
“Then tell them to listen.”
He went through a shop because the street outside was blocked. The muzzle caught the doorframe and stopped him so abruptly that he nearly fell backward. He swore, backed up, and turned sideways, working the long gun through ahead of him.
Beyond the shop, a wall had fallen across his route. He lifted the railgun onto it, climbed after it, and hauled it down the other side. The sling cut into the same place on his shoulder. By the time he reached the open square, his forearms were trembling.
There was a broken stone balustrade near its center. Behind it he could see almost straight up. He rested the forward casing on the stone and let his hands open for a moment. They hurt as the blood came back into them.
The angel drifted overhead. Its wings filled the square's reflection in every surviving window.
“I'm in position,” he said.
“Can you see it?”
“Nothing but armor yet.”
He brought the stock against his shoulder and looked through the sight. The pyramid slid across the glass. Beneath it, six plates met in a closed black seam.
He moved the muzzle with both hands, following that seam. The great wings lifted.
The plates began to part, and Sevrin fired.
A blue-white line split the dust above him. The railgun drove back into his shoulder hard enough to knock his teeth together. Stone burst beneath the forward casing.
His dart struck the edge of a moving plate.
The plate broke inward. For a moment the angel's whole underside vanished in a blaze of escaping light. Then something larger than the station roof spun out of the brightness, trailing one of the long, iridescent wings. The angel lurched. Its gathering beam went across the empty roofs instead of down into the square, sputtered, and stopped.
“Sevrin?”
“Too soon. I caught the plate.”
“You hurt it.”
The severed wing was falling slowly, folding over itself as it came. Above it, the pyramid rolled. The torn joint turned toward him, and through the wrecked shutters he could see the chamber. There was no outer armor in the way now.
The remaining wings stiffened and leveled the body. Inside the torn chamber, the rings spun faster. White light was gathering to a point again.
Sevrin shoved the muzzle higher. The sight came off his eye. He bent his knees, set his boots farther apart, and found the opening again.
The gun's ready light turned green. He put the sight inside the torn rim and fired his second dart.
The bright rings broke.
For a fraction of a second he could see each one separately, tilted out of place in the white chamber. Then light burst from the seams of the pyramid. One black face lifted away from the others. The remaining wings lashed outward, scattering panes of color across the smoke.
The central body dropped. Sevrin was already pulling the gun off the stone. He got the sling over his head and ran toward the shop, the power block hammering against his thigh.
Behind him, the severed wing hit the square.
The ground threw him onto his knees. He held the gun clear, got one foot underneath himself, and stumbled on. A shadow passed over him. When he looked back, the balustrade was gone beneath a dark sweep of metal.
Farther away, the pyramid struck the emptied blocks along its own white furrow. The impact came up through the soles of his boots.
He reached the shop wall and stopped there, gasping. “It's down,” he said.
Bera said nothing.
“Bera. It's down.”
“I can see.” Her voice was different now. “Where did you hit it?”
“Beneath the body. The plates open when the wings spread. Get directly underneath and wait until they're clear. Put the round into the rings.”
She began repeating his words on the wider band. He heard another voice ask her to repeat them, and then another.
Sevrin looked at the gun's counter.
One.
The largest angel had been above the western hills. Now it was turning.
Sevrin watched its wings rise out of the smoke. He had thought the first one enormous. This one's trailing ribbons reached from the hilltops to the edge of the city. Black pyramids hung around its central mass, turning without touching it. Light moved along its wings in bands of red and gold and colors that made his eyes water.
It followed the white furrow toward the square. The station stood north of its path, though the ribbons of its wings reached across the roofs.
“One more round,” he told Bera.
“I heard. Come back this way.”
He looked at the station's side entrance. People were still going down it.
“Keep them moving.”
The gun was pulling his shoulder lower. He shifted the sling to the other side, using the wall to take the weight, then lifted it again. The nearest wing passed above the roofs. The dust on the street stirred toward it. Every loose scrap of paper rose.
Sevrin walked out from the shop.
He could see the underside of the great body, but not the chamber. The lower wings overlapped too deeply. From here, a dart would go into armor. He kept walking.
The barrel dipped as his left hand weakened. He caught it with his right, lifted it across a fallen sign, and stopped to breathe. There was no wall ahead of him to put it on. The dead angel's wing covered the balustrade and most of the square.
The living one moved over him. It made a sound he felt in his chest before he heard it: a deep, continuous note that set the broken shop windows singing. He tried to raise the railgun. The muzzle climbed, wavered, and fell.
“Come on,” he said to it.
He lowered himself onto one knee. With the sling still tight across his back, he set his forward elbow on his raised knee and worked the stock into his shoulder. The long rails rose across the sky.
Above him, the black seam was still closed.
He had needed two darts to finish the first angel; now he had one.
He looked along the rails until his eye found the sight. The wings spread. His view was steep enough now. He saw the plates begin to slide apart.
He did not fire.
A white crescent appeared behind the first plate. His hands shook. The crescent moved to the edge of the sight, and he hauled it back into the center.
More of the chamber came into view. The machinery inside was already turning. It was going to fire straight down at him. Far above his head, light began gathering into a single point.
He waited for the last plate to clear.
“Sevrin,” Bera said.
The plate moved.
He fired into the open chamber.
The recoil knocked his elbow off his knee and flung him onto his back. The gun landed across his thighs. High above him, a small, violent burst lit the chamber. The point of white light spread sideways. A crack ran up one face of the pyramid, bright all the way to its apex.
For a moment the wings held their full reach above the city.
Then the white point went out. The great body pitched forward.
Sevrin rolled the gun off his thighs and struggled onto his feet, pulling at the sling.
It would have been easier to leave it. There were more darts in the army trucks. Somewhere, there were more darts. He got it off the ground and ran for the narrow stair beside the shop.
The angel was still carrying forward. Its central body dropped along the furrow, past the square toward the burned blocks. A trailing wing raked the station roof. Tiles cascaded down its walls, and Sevrin could hear stone breaking ahead of the shadow.
He reached the stair with the gun across his body. The muzzle struck the handrail. He turned, dragging the power block against the wall, and fell down the steps sideways.
Something vast struck the street above. The stair went dark. Dust filled his mouth. He curled around the railgun while the masonry overhead ground together, and held on until the noise ended.
The radio was still talking.
“Red Plain Three to city relay. We got under it. We waited.”
Sevrin lay still and listened.
“Round went clean into the opening. It's down on the north ridge. Do you hear? It's down.”
Bera answered them. Another team came on, asking about the angle. She told them. Somewhere much farther away, a voice began giving a gun crew corrections, then cut out beneath the snap of a discharge.
Sevrin put a hand against the stair wall and sat up.
He could see the faint glow of the ruined street between the broken steps above him. He worked the railgun up first, rail by rail, then climbed after it. At the top he had to rest on both knees before he could lift it onto its sling.
The great pyramid lay in the furrow beyond the square, broken into black slabs. One of its wings had curled over the station and come to rest above the square. Color still flickered along it, fading in little patches. Most of the ticket hall's roof was gone, but the side stair was still open. A lamp moved below its first turn, and voices were coming up from the platforms.
The radio carried more voices. A southern team had fired. A northern one needed another minute. Red Plain Three was already moving toward a second target.
Sevrin looked up through the ragged opening between the dead wings. Beyond the smoke he could see three stars, small and steady.
People were coming out of the station's side entrance. Bera stood among them, leaning on another soldier. She saw him and lifted her hand.
He tried to lift his own. The railgun began to slip, and he caught it with both hands instead. She started across the square toward him.