magic firepower their collective force standing at the doorway to the vault has.”
“Well, how much firepower do we have to drive them out?”
“Nearly two-hundred-and-fifty soldiers. However, most of them are fighting the airship that’s still shooting at us.”
“Can’t you divert more soldiers down here? The ship isn’t going to bring down the building on their own people.”
“That ship can destroy larger parts of this building without compromising the rest. Damnation is built like a honeycomb, with separate compartments, each one stable and independent from the others.”
“So they could obliterate the control deck and the entire prison block, but the vault would still remain standing?”
“Yes,” he confirmed.
I wondered briefly if someone had come here to do just that: kill a prisoner. Heaven knew there were many notorious ones locked up in here. And those prisoners had many enemies. As well as allies. Allies who would kill them rather than allow them to spill their secrets to the Legion’s Interrogators.
But then the enemy airship would have blasted the prison block to bits and flown off. The longer they remained here, the more danger they were in. It took a long time to shoot at a warded vault door before they had any chance of breaking through. If all the intruders wanted to accomplish was to kill a prisoner—or even all of the prisoners—they wouldn’t have bothered with breaking the ward. They would have just sent enough people down here to make it look like they wanted to steal something while they blasted apart the prison.
Or they might be trying to rescue a prisoner.
“What measures are in place to keep the prisoners from escaping here?” I asked Major Grant.
“Besides the usual wards, walls, and soldiers guarding them, each prisoner has been fitted with a necklace that will blow their head off if they venture more than a hundred feet from this building.”
Which would kill the prisoner. Decapitation was a surefire way to kill most anything supernatural. Even Legion soldiers—or angels, for that matter—could not survive without a head.
“How are the necklaces deactivated?” I asked.
“That can only be done if a Legion soldier with the right clearance physically grips the necklace. It then unlocks. If anyone else touches the necklace, including the prisoner, it blows.”
“Don’t the prisoners ever touch the necklace by mistake? Such as in their sleep?”
“The prisoners are highly motivated to remain still in their sleep. No prisoner has ever died by inadvertently hitting the necklace in their sleep. However, as a precaution, each cell is reenforced and isolated from the others. If one prison cell is destroyed, the other cells are unaffected.”
“The honeycomb design again.”
He nodded. “Yes. Honeycombs within honeycombs. The building is a honeycomb, and each section inside it is a honeycomb too.”
“It’s an ingenious design,” I told him.
“I know,” he replied, his pride apparent.
So he’d been the one to design the prison. Good for him. I’d known he was smart the first time I’d met him.
“Based on all this information, we have to assume the intruders’ target is indeed the vault,” I said. “If we’re wrong, if they are trying to rescue a prisoner, there seem to be other measures in place to deter them from that course of action, namely the exploding collars.”
He nodded in agreement.
“The intruders have the corridor guarded,” I continued. “A few people who can shoot only halfway decently could defend that corridor for a long time. We need more soldiers.”
The Major’s phone buzzed. He glanced down at the screen. Then he looked up at me.
“Colonel Holyfire’s ship has responded,” he reported.
“How long until they’ll be here?”
“They’re not coming. Their mission supersedes our skirmish.” He frowned as he spoke; it was clearly a direct quote. “The Colonel is confident that the daughter of General Silverstar should be able to sort out our little problem.” His scowl was deeper this time.
But not as deep as mine. A few soldiers looked at me with obvious apprehension. They knew Colonel Holyfire had just dealt me a massive insult. I was an angel in my own right. An angel with my own territory and titles. An angel with a long list of accomplishments.
And yet Colonel Holyfire had referred to me as merely the ‘daughter of General Silverstar’. Not even by my name or rank. He’d basically just shown me a big, fat middle finger from across the sky.
“What are you going to do to Colonel Holyfire?” a soldier asked me in a rasped whisper.
“I haven’t decided yet,” I answered honestly. “But whatever I decide to do to him, he’ll