BZRK: Reloaded (BZRK 2)

Domville was knocked to his knees, and it was from that position that he saw cabins torn apart as the side of the Volendam was opened like a tin of sardines.

He saw men and women exposed, dressing, lounging, going to the bathroom, all suddenly revealed as the side of the Volendam was ripped off.

The hulls of both ships crumpled, railing buckling inward, bits of rigging suddenly everywhere, debris flying, and the all while that awful metal shriek that went on and on.

It was a lifeboat winch that tore the hole in the last LNG sphere.

The blast of depressurizing LNG actually jolted the Doll Ship. Domville jumped to his feet and began running to the powerful jet, made visible only by the heat-wave-like distortion of the lights of the cruise ship.

A spark would ignite it.

Domville wanted to be that spark, but not yet, not yet, not while natural gas was blasting into the last few dozen meters of open cabins. The jet of gas had to waft clear of the boat. It was at exactly that point, as it blasted over empty waters, that he wanted to light it—before it could spill into the streets and passageways of the Harbor Town complex and provide fuel for an explosion big enough to level the city.

A spark. A lighter. Anything and the gas would ignite.

He froze, listening to the cries of people on the cruise ship. The suddenly stopped scream as a man fell into the grinding metal. The now-distant noise of helicopter rotors. And the overpowering roar of the gas jetting out.

He felt the Doll Ship sag, slow. It was listing to starboard, which was good, good, bring that jet down to water level, let it blast harmlessly into the

water until the ship rolled over and sank.

The Doll Ship moved past the docked cruise ship, sagged farther to starboard, and now was the time, now, now! Domville raced toward the gas jet and standing in the edge of the methane hurricane, puffed his cigar.

Nothing. The cigar had gone out!

Domville fumbled frantically for his lighter as the Doll Ship, slower but not stopped, barreled on toward the Harbor Town pier.

He found his lighter. Thought, Too bloody late, most likely, and flicked it.

Domville was hurled, a burning torch, into the dock at the waterline. He was dead before the impact.

A huge blast of flame burning at 1,600 degrees Celsius incinerated the dock, boiled the water and sent up a vast cloud of steam that rolled across the face of the Gateway Hotel.

Then, the sheer force of the jet of flame began to shift the Doll Ship. Its starboard list became less pronounced and the blowtorch, that massive, terrifying blowtorch rose as the Doll Ship rolled toward its left side.

Three hundred and ninety rooms on thirty-six floors of the Gateway Hotel. The fiery blast burned its way from bottom to top. It blew out windows, incinerated everything and everyone inside instantly. In seconds the hotel was a shell.

The steel support beams were warping, collapsing inward like a tall man bent over from a blow to the stomach. A minute more and the building would be gone and the blowtorch would burn on and through and ignite the city.

But the roll that had begun was accelerating. The ship’s ballast had shifted decisively. It rolled onto its side, sending the flame shooting hundreds of feet into the air.

Now at last the remaining residents of the Doll House panicked.

The inside of Benjaminia was a slaughterhouse—dead marines, many more dead villagers, hung from bloody catwalks. The sphere turned on its axis, and floors became walls. Bodies fell through the air.

Like the turning drum of a dryer, the sphere rolled on and now people clinging to desperate handholds fell screaming and crashed into the painted mural of the Great Souls.

Water rushed in through the opened segments.

The blowtorch submerged but burned on and turned the water to steam as the Doll Ship sank, and settled on the harbor floor.

There was a knock at the door. Bug Man knew who it was. His message had been delivered. He set his platooned nanobots on their course, out of the president’s eye, racing away down her cheek. Then he detached from the twitcher gear and went to the door.

Five people stood there: the strange girl with the creepy eye tattoo, a serious-looking boy with startling blue eyes, a pretty but angry girl with light freckles on her cheeks. And—supported by an auburnhaired woman—a young man with dark hair and an intense brow and eyes that stared straight past Bug Man.

“They’re out of her,” Bug Man said.

They all stepped inside.