Eighteen seconds remained on the clock as Arthur Vance sprinted up the sixty-meter incline of Ymir’s pinned forearm.
The surface of the titan’s limb was a dangerous nightmare of jagged whale spine bones, rusted steel mooring cables, and razor-sharp sheets of cryo-ice. But Arthur’s magnetic crampons dug into the frozen metal with unerring care. His lower-body exosuit actuators whined at maximum output, propelling him forward in twelve-foot bounding strides that carried him up the forearm, past the shattered elbow joint, and onto the broad expanse of the titan’s left shoulder.
Wind screamed past his faceplate, howling with the backwash of Pip’s solar downdraft.
Beneath his boots, the titanic flesh was convulsing with violent, underground spasms. The creature was trying to ignite its core in a suicidal overload. But Echo’s time frozen stillness field was strangling its bio-electric impulses, stretching each split second into an eternity of total numbness.
Suddenly, two backup arms—hidden beneath the titan’s armored chest muscles—tore through the frozen rib plates.
Tipped with four-foot talons of serrated star-iron, the mutated limbs lunged upward in a blind, convulsive reflex. He swept straight toward Arthur’s torso with the driving force of falling construction heavy beams.
Arthur didn’t break stride.
He dropped his balance point, sliding across the frost-slicked shoulder armor on his knees. The first talon whistled half an inch above his storm hood, shearing away his backup antenna mast in a shower of sparks. The second talon came crashing down. Then, Arthur fired an air-powered grappling piton from his…
