Across Potsdam, the gunfire had not stopped.
Over half an hour had passed since the first shots shattered the morning, yet the crackling continued without pause from the direction of the Royal Palace. Rifles, carbines, and machine guns blended into one endless tearing sound, broken only by the heavier concussion of grenades and cannon fire. Smoke rose above the royal district in several dark columns, spreading beneath the pale morning sky while flames flickered somewhere behind the rooftops.
The capital seemed to have stopped breathing.
Men stood in the streets with anger and confusion written across their faces. Women watched the smoke with hands pressed over their mouths. Children clung to their parents and were hurried back into houses whose windows trembled whenever another explosion rolled across the city.
Trams had halted. Double-decker buses stood motionless in the road. Motorcars, delivery trucks, and wagons had pulled aside without waiting to be ordered, their drivers already clearing a path for the growing chorus of sirens racing toward the palace.
No one mistook it for an exercise now. There was too much smoke. Too much fire. And the shooting had gone on far too long.
Emergency vehicles streamed through the opened streets. Police cars and motorcycles rushed toward the royal district, followed by ambulances and troop wagons. Among the watching crowds, armed men pushed steadily in the same direction—Eternal Guards recalled from leave, Black Legion soldiers recovering in the capital, and veterans who had heard the distant battle and moved toward it before any order could reach them.
Some wore uniform coats thrown hastily over underclothes. Others carried only pistols, service badges, or the black markings of Oskar's formations. A few had no weapons at all.
Still they ran.
Ahead of them, the dark armored carriers of the SEK thundered through Potsdam.
The six-wheeled vehicles were painted deep Prussian blue, almost black beneath the smoke and morning haze. Shielded machine guns rested on their roofs, barrels pointed forward as engines roared and sirens screamed. They moved in a hard column toward the fighting, while civilian traffic pressed itself against pavements and building fronts to let them pass.
Inside the lead carrier, the outside world disappeared behind steel.
A low red lamp illuminated twelve men seated along the walls of the armored compartment. Their bodies swayed with every turn, knees nearly touching across the narrow aisle as they prepared in silence.
Hands tightened straps and checked armored vests. Reinforced knee pads were secured over dark trousers. Helmets were fastened. Goggles were lowered. Black cloths were drawn over mouths and noses against smoke and dust.
Riflemen checked their magazines and chambers. Two men loaded shotguns and rested the weapons across their thighs. A marksman sat beside the rear doors with a long rifle braced between his knees. Gas masks hung at their sides beside grenades, tourniquets, ammunition, and holstered pistols.
No one needed to be reminded what waited ahead.
The officer nearest the doors raised two fingers.
"Two minutes."
The men answered with silent nods. A bolt was pulled. A shotgun slide worked once. A final strap was tightened.
Then bullets began striking the armored hull.
Metal rang along the carrier's side. One round flattened against a plate with a hard clang. Another struck close to the rear hinge, leaving a bright scar in the dark steel.
The roof-mounted machine gun answered immediately.
Its roar shook the compartment as the carrier accelerated toward the outer gates of the royal district.
The palace proper was not the first barrier.
The Royal Palace of Potsdam stood at the center of a much larger royal quarter—a broad district of gardens, athletic grounds, administrative buildings, servants' homes, guest houses, guard posts, and private residences belonging to officials and members of the imperial household. Decorative iron fences and spear-topped gates enclosed that outer district, separating it from the ordinary streets of the capital.
Those gates were already under attack.
Small groups of Resurrectionist Royal Guards had established firing positions behind the ironwork, within gate lodges, and among nearby buildings. They were holding back the first police units to arrive: ordinary officers armed mainly with pistols, rifles, and shotguns, fighting from behind patrol cars, stone posts, and garden walls.
The police had secured the surrounding streets and prevented the Resurrectionists from spreading outward, but they had not yet broken through.
Then the SEK column arrived.
The lead carrier did not slow. Its roof gun hammered the gate lodges while the driver aimed directly at the iron entrance. Royal Guards fired back, bullets striking the front plate and snapping through the air around the gunner.
The carrier hit the gates with the full weight of steel and speed.
Iron screamed.
The two halves bowed inward, tore from their fastenings, and collapsed beneath the wheels. The armored vehicle burst through in a spray of twisted bars and broken masonry, with the rest of the column following close behind.
Machine guns swept the outer positions. Police officers rose from cover and advanced behind them. Resurrectionists abandoned the gate lodges or were cut down where they stood, and within moments the first defensive layer had been cracked.
The SEK did not remain there.
Regular police spread through the royal district behind them, securing roads, searching buildings, guarding intersections, and sealing every route by which an enemy might escape or circle behind the assault. Ambulances and ammunition vehicles moved into the protected area as officers cleared servants' homes, guest residences, gardens, and administrative structures one by one.
The armored carriers continued toward the palace proper.
The road ahead was broad and elegant, lined with carefully trimmed hedges, tall trees, ornamental lamps, and the scattered manor houses of men important enough to live within sight of the imperial residence. It had been built for royal carriages, parades, and peaceful morning traffic.
Now it carried a column of armored vehicles toward battle.
Smoke thickened as they advanced. The gunfire grew louder. Then the buildings opened out, and the palace walls came into view.
The heavier battle lay there.
Karl's manor stood across the street from the fortified palace grounds, its upper floors burning and its gardens torn apart by shellfire. Eternal Guards fired from shattered windows, broken walls, hedges, cellar vents, and ruined gateposts. Across from them rose the medieval-looking outer wall surrounding the palace proper, reinforced and altered over the years beneath Oskar's direction. Towers divided the wall into separate fighting sections, while the main gates opened onto the long ceremonial driveway leading toward the palace itself.
Before those gates sat the tank Karl had crippled, and the Eternal Guards had finished off.
Its turret remained locked at an awkward angle. Smoke and flame pushed from the rear deck, while the open hatches breathed black fumes from the men burning inside. Eternal Guards moved around the wreck, firing toward the battlements and throwing grenades over the walls wherever defenders showed themselves.
The SEK carriers entered that chaos at speed.
Bullets struck their armor almost immediately. Their roof guns opened fire on the walls, hammering parapets, towers, and firing slits as the vehicles braked hard along the street. Rear doors swung open before the wheels had fully stopped.
The men dismounted in practiced order.
Two dropped beside each carrier and immediately returned fire. Others moved toward the palace walls with rifles, shotguns, and ammunition for the Eternal Guard. The SEK medics broke away toward Karl's manor grounds, medical packs strapped across their backs as they began applying tourniquets, binding wounds, and preparing the badly injured for evacuation.
Captain Dieter met the arriving teams beside the ruined tank.
He stood in black armor streaked with soot, dust, and blood, his carbine held firmly in one hand. A deep silver gash had been carved across the side of his helmet where a piece of shrapnel had torn past him. Without the reinforced steel, it might have split his skull. Instead, it had left only a scar across the armor and another reminder of how narrowly he had survived.
"Order the regular police to continue securing the outer royal quarter!" Dieter shouted. "Clear every residence, road, and service building. Nothing reaches us from behind."
The SEK officer struck a fist against his chest.
"Your men will form along the palace walls," Dieter continued. "Spread east and west. No one enters or leaves the palace grounds without my knowledge. The teams at the main gate will prepare for the assault."
He pointed toward the battlements.
"We take the walls first. Until they are ours, no one advances deeper into the palace."
The orders were carried out at once.
No one charged blindly. Every advance was covered. Every movement had a purpose.
But discipline did not make the enemy any less dangerous.
The Resurrectionists holding the palace were Royal Guards—trained soldiers armed with the same modern weapons Oskar had introduced into the Imperial armed forces, weapons the Kaiser had later placed in the hands of his own household troops. Snipers watched from towers and upper windows. Machine guns covered the main gate and the street beyond it. Grenade launchers sent explosive rounds crashing into vehicles, hedges, garden walls, and every position the attackers tried to use as cover.
This was no struggle between professionals and frightened amateurs.
Both sides knew how to fight. Both sides wore armor. Both sides had prepared for the day when violence reached the palace.
And so, despite all their discipline, the casualties continued to rise.
Dieter looked past the gate arch and studied the ground beyond.
Karl had bought them access to the gates, but the advance had stopped there.
The palace building stood far inside the walls, beyond a long ceremonial driveway, formal gardens, fountains, and open parade ground. Its broad facade faced the entrance with rows upon rows of windows, many of them now occupied by Resurrectionists.
Every attempt to push through the gate was met by fire from the palace itself.
Second Company had men pinned behind the ruined tank, the gate towers, and the thick outer walls. They could enter the grounds, but they could not cross the exposed distance without being torn apart.
Dieter looked toward the newly arrived carriers.
He pointed to two of them.
"You two—empty your compartments!"
The SEK men inside dismounted quickly, taking weapons and ammunition with them. Only the drivers and roof gunners remained.
Dieter pointed through the gates.
"Move side by side. Advance until you can go no farther. Your vehicles are our cover."
The drivers understood and immediately made their engines growl.
Without any hesitation or fear for their own lives, the drivers of the two armored carriers moved their vehicles through the gate abreast, leaving only a narrow space between their steel bodies. Their machine guns fired toward the palace windows while Eternal Guards and SEK officers followed close behind, crouching within the moving shelter they provided.
The response from the palace was immediate.
Rifle fire struck the carriers in a storm. Machine guns joined seconds later, hammering the armor, wheels, viewing slits, and roof mounts. Grenade-launcher rounds burst around them, throwing soil, stone, and fragments across the advancing infantry.
One roof gunner was struck through the side and collapsed into his mount.
The other continued firing until a burst tore through the shield and threw him backward.
A driver slumped over his controls.
His carrier rolled forward several more meters before drifting sideways and grinding to a halt across the edge of the driveway.
The second vehicle continued a little farther. Its front wheel burst. Bullets cracked the viewing slit and struck the driver. The engine coughed, smoked, and died.
Both carriers had been silenced, but they had reached far enough.
Their armored hulls now stood within the palace grounds like two steel barricades, blocking part of the defenders' fire and giving the attackers their first real foothold beyond the gates.
"Forward!" Dieter shouted.
The Eternal Guard and the SEK surged through the shattered southern gateway behind the ruined carriers.
Some spread into the gardens and fired toward the palace windows, keeping the Resurrectionists inside from concentrating their fire on the walls. Others turned toward the two gate towers and forced their way into the narrow entrances beneath covering bursts and grenades. Behind them, ladder teams carried whatever they had managed to find from Karl's manor and the surrounding estates—garden ladders, maintenance frames, timber poles, anything strong enough to place men upon the battlements.
The battle for the southern wall began in earnest.
Modern rifles cracked beneath stonework built for an older age. Machine guns hammered the parapets. Grenades flew through smoke while black-armored men climbed toward Royal Guards firing down from above.
Slowly, the attackers began taking pieces of the wall.
One section near the eastern tower fell first. Then another stretch closer to the gate. Each foothold allowed more men to climb, spread out, and attack the next position from the side. The fighting remained vicious, but the Resurrectionists were no longer holding an unbroken line.
While the struggle continued along the southern front, the SEK widened the siege.
Armored vehicles and assault teams moved east and west along the roads outside the palace walls, establishing firing positions and sealing the remaining approaches. They did not yet attempt to storm those sections. Their purpose was containment—to encircle the palace proper, block escape, and ensure that no Resurrectionist force could emerge from another gate and strike the main assault from behind.
Farther back, the regular police continued securing the wider royal quarter.
Servants' homes, guest residences, administrative offices, gardens, and side streets were cleared one by one. Roadblocks appeared at every junction. Ambulances and ammunition vehicles moved forward only after each route had been searched and declared safe.
The entire royal district was slowly tightening around the palace like a noose.
And through it all, time continued moving.
The morning slipped away beneath smoke and gunfire. The sun climbed higher without anyone noticing, and midday drew closer while men still fought over the southern towers, stairwells, gates, and battlements.
Wounded soldiers were carried away.
Fresh ammunition arrived.
Eternal Guards recalled from leave joined the line in twos and threes, while SEK units replaced men already exhausted or bleeding.
Still the palace held.
Dieter remained at the southern gate, watching the assault unfold and sending men wherever the pressure was greatest.
"More ammunition to the eastern tower!"
"Reinforce the wall beside the gate!"
"Keep those palace windows suppressed!"
"Move the wounded back and clear the road!"
Reports reached him through the smoke.
Another section of wall taken. A tower still contested. More casualties near the driveway. Enemy reinforcements moving behind the palace windows.
Dieter looked over the battle and felt the full weight of the problem settling upon him.
They had broken through the outer royal quarter. They had reached the palace proper. They had even begun tearing sections of the southern wall from the Resurrectionists' hands.
But it was not enough. They needed more men. More ammunition. Heavier equipment.
Then another siren rose above the gunfire.
Dieter turned toward the road by which the SEK had arrived, expecting another police convoy or, perhaps, the first military reinforcements from the local garrison.
Instead, a fire engine came thundering through the smoke.
Its bell hammered wildly as it raced toward the palace, a long mechanical ladder folded across its roof. Armed figures clung to the running boards, rear platform, and ladder frame, their officers' uniforms blackened with coal dust and railway grime.
For one astonished moment, Dieter could only stare.
"What in God's name is a fire engine doing here?"
Then it drew closer, and he recognized the men riding upon it.
Günther. Max. Adolf. Otto. Göbels.
All five members of the Suicide Squad were there, soot-blackened and heavily armed, clinging to the stolen vehicle as though arriving at a palace siege aboard a fire engine were the most natural thing in the world.
Two more figures rode with them. Ronald and Hilary Tolkien.
Dieter's disbelief deepened.
Then he looked through the cracked front glass.
Captain Conrad of First Company sat behind the wheel, his uniform dark with soot and one side of his face marked by dried blood. Both hands were locked around the steering wheel as he drove the engine directly toward the southern front.
Dieter stared at him.
"Conrad?"
But before the fire engine reached the main gate, it came to the T-junction where the road divided. Conrad wrenched the wheel to the right.
The engine swung east.
Rather than joining Dieter's assault against the southern wall, it thundered along the road running beside the outer palace defenses. The choice was clearly deliberate. Oskar's family wing lay on the eastern side of the palace proper, while farther northeast—beyond gardens, paths, and service buildings—the besieged First Company barracks was still holding against Prittwitz's men.
Conrad was bringing his force as close to both positions as the surrounding roads allowed.
The turn also revealed the column behind him.
Two civilian motorcars and a commandeered truck emerged through the smoke, crowded with the Eternal Guards of First Company who had accompanied Tanya to Warsaw. Black helmets and armor filled the vehicles, rifles resting across open doors and windows as they raced toward the eastern wall.
Then a motorcycle swept past them all.
Tanya rode low over the machine, bent forward against the wind as she chased the fire engine around the eastern side of the palace.
The motorcycle was a polished Muscle Motors Silver-Class model—sleek, powerful, and decades ahead of the crude machines most of Europe still called modern. Beneath her, the engine roared like a living thing.
Her petite, hourglass figure seemed almost made for it.
Dust and soot marked the red dress she had worn from Warsaw, yet even now the fabric retained the unmistakable elegance familiar from fashion magazines and Angel Works advertisements. Its daring neckline framed the golden cross resting against her chest, while the fitted waist emphasized the soft strength and trained curves of her body. High heels remained stubbornly fixed to her feet as she leaned over the fuel tank, every movement of the motorcycle carried through her posture.
Her long golden-blond hair streamed behind her in shining waves.
For years, Germans had seen Tanya posed beside Muscle Motors machines—smiling, graceful, and radiant, the living image of modern German womanhood and everything Oskar's new order promised.
Now half the capital had watched that same woman race through its streets toward war.
Her great blue eyes framed with long lashes burned behind her driving goggles. Her breath came hard through a small, flared nose. There was no playful smile upon her full red lips now.
Only fury.
Dieter watched her disappear around the eastern corner of the palace wall.
"Lady Tanya?"
Through the windows of the protected car behind her, he caught a brief glimpse of Gundelinde, pale with fear, and Princess Louise beside her, close to tears. Between them sat Imperiel, staring in rigid silence toward the smoke rising from his home.
The entire party that had gone east only days before had returned.
For one heartbeat, Dieter stood motionless amid the gunfire, stunned by the sight of them.
Unknown to Captain Dieter, a separate battle had already been fought that morning at Berlin's central railway station.
A small detachment of Prittwitz's Seventh Army, marked by white armbands, had broken away from the main Resurrectionist force and seized the station before dawn. Railway workers were driven into offices and storage rooms at gunpoint while armed men occupied the platforms, signal boxes, and switching controls.
The purpose was simple. Hold the station, and they could halt loyal trains, redirect reinforcements, and choke one of the capital's most important arteries.
For several hours, they succeeded.
They might have held it longer had the Suicide Squad not followed them from the train.
Günther began quietly. Guards vanished into dark corridors. Throats were cut beside coal wagons and maintenance sheds. One sentry after another disappeared before the Resurrectionists understood they were being hunted.
Then the Suicide Squad overheard something that ended all patience.
Tanya's royal train was approaching, and the Resurrectionists intended to stop it and take her prisoner.
Günther attacked immediately.
The first shots echoed beneath the great glass roof, and the station descended into chaos. Fighting spread across platforms, waiting halls, signal rooms, coal yards, and administrative offices. Passengers crawled beneath benches while the Suicide Squad, soon supported by the first police responders, fought a prolonged and bitter standoff against the men occupying the station.
Then Tanya's train had arrived in the middle of it.
The doors opened before the train had fully stopped, and First Company disembarked firing. Imperiel came with them, pistol in hand, while Tanya's furious voice rang across the platforms above the gunfire.
The remaining Resurrectionists were overwhelmed within minutes. Most died trying to break through the loyalist cordon or fighting from the station offices. Others, realizing the battle was lost, dropped their weapons and surrendered.
By the time the smoke began to clear, Günther had told Tanya everything.
A coup was underway. The Royal family was trapped inside the palace. Her children were somewhere within it.
From that moment onward, nothing moved quickly enough for her.
Civilian motorcars and trucks were commandeered immediately. A motorcycle was taken from a wealthy young man who had the good sense not to protest. At a nearby fire station, Tanya demanded the largest engine they possessed—the one carrying a mechanical ladder tall enough to reach the palace walls.
The stunned firemen had been preparing to answer the fires around the royal quarter. Instead, they watched their engine disappear beneath armed soldiers, Tanya, and the Suicide Squad.
The firemen themselves remained behind.
Now their machine skidded to a halt along the eastern side of the palace compound.
Bullets struck it almost immediately. Glass shattered. Metal rang. First Company poured from the vehicles behind it and opened fire on the battlements, forcing Royal Guards to duck behind the parapet.
"Raise the ladder!" Captain Conrad shouted.
Otto and Göbels threw themselves onto the controls. Gears groaned beneath their hands as the long mechanical ladder lifted from the roof and began turning toward the wall.
Tanya stopped directly behind the engine.
The motorcycle slid sideways before settling beneath her. For one dangerous moment, she remained seated in the open street without the slightest attempt to seek cover, one hand still gripping the handlebar as smoke moved around her.
The Royal Guards on the battlements saw her. Several rifles turned toward the woman in red, but then the men behind them froze.
They knew Tanya in a way the rest of Germany did not. Before she had been a princess, before the magazines, the cosmetics, the royal dresses, and the children, she had been a girl serving within the palace as a maid. Many of these men had watched her grow from a stubborn young servant into one of the central women of Oskar's household.
They had seen her carrying trays through corridors. They had watched her walking in the gardens with children gathered around her skirts. They had heard her singing through open windows.
Some had laughed at her sharp remarks, exchanged friendly words with her during long watches, or received hot drinks and quiet kindness from her during bitter winter nights.
They might fear Oskar. They might hate the Eternal Guard and believe the New Dawn threatened the old monarchy they had sworn to defend.
But Tanya was not an abstract enemy.
She was part of the palace itself. A familiar, beloved figure who had risen from servant to princess before their eyes.
And none of them truly wanted to harm her.
Tanya rose from the motorcycle and tore the goggles from her face. Her long golden hair spilled around her shoulders in the wind. Her full lips trembled, not from fear, but from a fury no one upon those walls had ever seen in her before. Terror for her children burned in her great blue eyes until even hardened soldiers found themselves unable to look away.
"Where are my babies?" she screamed.
Her voice rose through the smoke and gunfire with unnatural clarity.
"Where are my children?"
The Royal Guards stared down at her.
Tanya stepped forward and pointed at them as though they were disobedient boys rather than armored men defending a fortress.
"What in God's name has gotten into you?" she demanded. "Have all of you gone mad?"
Several men stepped back. Rifles trembled in their hands.
They had expected Eternal Guards, armed police, faceless enemies they could hate. They had not expected Tanya's rage.
"You have fired upon your own palace!" she shouted. "You have endangered women and children while Germany is already at war, with an enemy that seeks to destroy us all! You are helping traitors tear this nation apart, and still you stand there pretending this is duty?"
Her voice sharpened into command.
"Put down those weapons right now!"
One Royal Guard flinched as though she had struck him.
"I am warning you," Tanya continued. "Return my children to me and end this foolishness before you destroy yourselves! Do it now!"
Something shifted upon the wall.
It was more than recognition or guilt. There was a force in Tanya's voice—grief, beauty, fury, and something beneath all three that seemed to settle directly into the hearts of those listening.
Another commander's anger might have hardened them. Tanya's made them ashamed.
One man lowered his rifle completely. Another stared at his weapon as if only now realizing whom it had been pointed toward. A third stepped back from the parapet and raised both hands.
Others remained frozen between obedience and surrender, unable to fire at her but afraid to break ranks while their officers still watched.
That hesitation was enough.
The fire engine's ladder struck the battlement with a metallic crash. Max and Adolf were already at its head. They threw themselves onto the wall almost together.
One Royal Guard turned toward them and tried to raise his rifle.
Max shot him through the chest.
Another swung his weapon toward Adolf. Adolf fired twice, dropping the man against the parapet before he could pull the trigger.
The two men landed low upon the narrow wall walk, weapons covering opposite directions.
"Drop them!" Max roared.
"Rifles down!" Adolf shouted. "On the ground! Now!"
Günther came over the parapet behind them, followed by Otto, Göbels, Ronald, and Hilary.
"You heard Her Highness!" Günther thundered. "Weapons down immediately!"
A rifle clattered onto the stone then another. Several Royal Guards sank to their knees or lay flat upon the battlement with their hands spread where they could be seen. One begged Tanya's forgiveness from above. Another swore repeatedly that he had never intended for the children to be harmed.
But not everyone surrendered.
An officer farther along the wall screamed at his men to resist. A bullet struck him before he could finish the order.
The remaining hardliners fired wildly toward the Suicide Squad, then withdrew toward the nearest towers and enclosed stairways, fleeing back toward the palace and the master whose authority had brought them there.
The Suicide Squad fired after them.
"Push!" Günther ordered. "Do not let them regroup! We take the wall!"
Max and Adolf led the pursuit toward the eastern tower. Otto and Göbels followed, while Ronald and Hilary covered the rear.
First Company began climbing behind them.
The eastern battlement rapidly became a loyal foothold. Some Eternal Guards turned south, spreading toward Dieter's assault at the main gate. Others pushed northeast along the walls, toward the gardens surrounding their besieged barracks.
Tanya had not merely opened another section of the palace defenses.
She had split the Resurrectionist line and brought loyal fire closer to both the family wing and the men trapped inside the First Company barracks.
Below, she pointed after the advancing soldiers.
"Go!" she screamed. "Find my babies! And show no mercy to anyone who has harmed them!"
"Yes, my lady!" Günther shouted back.
Tanya immediately climbed onto the side of the fire engine and reached for the ladder.
Captain Conrad saw her.
"My lady, wait! What are you doing?"
"I am going inside."
"But it is too dangerous."
Tanya gave him an offended huff.
"Do not lecture me about danger until you have given birth, Captain. My children are in there, and they need their mother."
Conrad opened his mouth.
He wanted to explain that childbirth and climbing into rifle fire were not, from a military perspective, comparable situations.
He decided against it.
"My lady," he pleaded instead, "please. The wall is still contested."
Tanya looked upward, where the gunfire was already moving farther toward the towers.
"Oskar is not here," she said. "He went to the Baltic, and now he is somewhere between the sea and Potsdam while our children remain trapped inside."
Her gaze returned to Conrad.
"And as I can plainly see, the rest of you have been struggling to get through these walls without me."
Even then, Conrad almost winced.
"So someone must go and bring them back," Tanya continued. "Since their father is absent, their mother will do it."
There was nothing he could say to stop her.
To Conrad, Tanya was more than Oskar's wife. She was one of the living pillars of the Iron Prince's household, the mother of his eldest son, and nearly a saint within the strange faith that had grown around their family.
He did not dare seize her.
He could only place himself between her and the danger.
"Then I will go first."
"Good," Tanya replied. "But do not move slowly."
Conrad climbed onto the ladder.
Tanya followed directly behind him, gathering her red skirts in one hand as her heels struck the metal rungs.
Behind them, Imperiel watched beside Gundelinde and Princess Louise.
Then he moved.
"Imperiel!" Gundelinde called. "Where are you going?"
He looked back only once.
"Stay here. I have this."
Then he seized the lower rungs and climbed after Tanya.
Louise gathered her skirts and followed him without hesitation.
Gundelinde remained frozen beside the car.
She was not a soldier. She had never stormed a wall, chased armed men through smoke, or climbed a siege ladder toward gunfire. Unlike Oskar's other women, she had never even found the courage to train seriously with pistols or martial arts.
Her hands trembled around the fabric of her dress as she watched Tanya, Louise, and Imperiel rising above her.
But her children were inside the palace as well.
Louise did not know what she was doing either, yet she was climbing.
And Imperiel—Tanya's firstborn—was entering the battle without her protection.
Gundelinde swallowed.
Then she gathered her skirts in both hands, hurried awkwardly in her heels after them, and began to climb.
Behind the eastern assault, First Company continued pouring onto the battlement. The Suicide Squad drove the fleeing Resurrectionists from the wall, while loyal fire reached deeper into the inner gardens to support the besieged barracks.
Another section of the palace defenses was passing into loyal hands.
But Tanya's arrival had stirred more than just the men upon the walls.
Across Berlin and Potsdam, people had seen her racing through the streets on the motorcycle. They had watched the famous woman from advertisements and magazines fly past with fury in her eyes and armed men following behind her.
The sight spread faster than any official command.
Men left cafés, workshops, homes, and tram stations. Laborers carried hammers and axes. Veterans brought old pistols and hunting rifles. Others came with kitchen knives, clubs, tools, or nothing beyond their fists.
Even off-duty Royal Guards joined the gathering crowds, casting aside uncertain insignia and declaring themselves loyal to the Kaiser and the Iron Prince's household.
At their head marched Priest Arnold, the young leader of the Church of the New Dawn.
He had been roused from sleep within Berlin's great cathedral and now advanced toward the royal quarter with a heavy hammer raised in one hand. His black clerical coat moved around him as he called the people to rise.
"The house of the Iron Prince is under attack!" Arnold proclaimed. "Traitors have raised weapons against mothers, children, and the sacred blood of Germany!"
The crowd answered with an angry roar.
"Then rise!" Arnold commanded. "Stand for the New Dawn! Stand for the royal family! Stand against those who would drag Germany back into darkness!"
He raised the hammer higher.
"Cast down these architects of ruin and send them back into the abyss from which they crawled!"
More people joined from every street.
The capital had become a disturbed hive.
At first there had been confusion.
Now there was anger.
And that anger was beginning to move toward the palace.
Yet beneath the gathering siege, Karl moved alone through darkness.
He slipped along the western basement corridors in his torn batsuit, avoiding Resurrectionist patrols searching for the small black figure who had vanished through the cellar window. Whenever he heard boots or voices, he disappeared behind pipes, storage doors, barrels, or deep stone recesses until the men passed.
At last he discovered a ventilation shaft set low into the wall.
It was narrow. Far too narrow for an ordinary man, but for Karl it was just perfect.
He forced the grating loose, pulled himself inside, and began crawling east through the darkness.
However while Karl crawled, something far more terrible was being prepared beneath the palace.
In the eastern basement, the surviving Eternal Guards were being driven back step by step along the stairwell. There was no door separating the stairs from the underground entrance hall. The main stairway, the freight elevator, and the smaller kitchen lift all opened directly into the same broad chamber before the immense wooden doors of the Oskar Industrial Group meeting room.
Gunfire flashed from the steps. Grenades burst against stone. Each time the Resurrectionists gained another turn of the staircase, the Eternal Guards withdrew a little farther toward the hall, firing as they went and leaving bodies behind them.
Blood already marked the walls.
The wounded had been dragged through the great doors and into the meeting chamber, leaving dark streaks across the stone floor and smeared handprints along the passage. Beneath the painted heavens and the towering image of Babel, medics worked beside the triangular marble table, cutting away armor, tightening tourniquets, and binding wounds while the battle echoed just beyond the doors.
Farther inside, beyond the meeting room, Oskar's family had been moved deep into the hidden laboratory.
Anna held the youngest children close beneath the laboratory's cold electric lights. Nearby, Azarael lay wounded while Liorael remained stubbornly at his side, refusing to leave him. Juniel and Lailael stood beside their mother with pistols still clutched in their small hands, while the others huddled among looming machines, armored frames, pipes, and strange inventions they could scarcely comprehend.
Gas masks concealed every face.
In the entrance hall, masked Eternal Guards rolled heavy chemical containers out from the laboratory.
One after another, they were positioned near the stairwell, the freight elevator, and the smaller service lift. Warning symbols and Oskar's private coded markings covered their sides. Hoses were connected. Seals were checked. Valves were tested while the defenders on the stairs continued losing ground.
They were preparing their final answer.
If the palace could not be retaken, they would make it uninhabitable. They would flood the stairways, elevator shafts, corridors, galleries, and chambers above with poison. Every Resurrectionist between the basement and the open sky would die.
The Eternal Guards believed everyone who truly mattered had already been brought to safety beneath the palace.
They knew nothing of the hundreds of servants being held prisoner in the great hall above, nor that Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Empress remained captives in the imperial study.
And even had they known, it would have changed little.
Their duty was not to the palace staff, not to the Kaiser, not even to the monarchy itself.
Their duty was to Oskar—to his wives, his children, and the bloodline they had sworn to protect at any cost.
Outside, the battle continued to rage. Tanya climbed the eastern wall while Karl crawled through the darkness toward the trapped family.
And far beneath them both, as the Eternal Guard surrendered another turn of the staircase, masked hands closed around the valves.