London

Pomeroy shrugged. “I don’t think the Engineers would have let us keep hold of our relics much longer. At least this way we’ll go down fighting.”

“And you might win…”

“Oh, yes,” the old Historian gave a rueful chuckle. “We used to thrash them regularly in the interguild football cup, you know. Of course, they didn’t have machine-guns and Stalkers to help them…” He lifted her face and looked into her eyes, very serious. “Stop them, Katherine. Stick a spanner in the works.”

Mortal Engines, Chudleigh Pomeroy Pulls it Off, Chapter 32, pg 133/152

He falls away from her, and she drops to her knees and wonders where to hide. Nothing remains of Vambrace but his smouldering boots, which would be cartoony and almost funny except that his feet are still inside them. Half his men are down, but the rest are rallying, and they have better weapons than the Historians. They spray the foyer with gunfire, striking sparks from the marble floor and flinging splinters of dinosaur bone high into the air. Display cases come apart in bright cataracts of powdered glass, and the Historians who are cowering behind them go scrambling back to other hiding places, or fall among the fallen exhibits and lie still. Above them, argon-globes smash and gutter until the hall is dark, stuttering like cine-film in the migraine flicker of gun-light, and the
Engineers are pushing forward through it towards the doors.

Behind them, forgotten, Bevis Pod reaches for an abandoned gun and swings it up, his long hands feeling their way across the shiny metal for catches and triggers. Katherine watches him. The air around her is thick with wailing shot and whirling chips of marble and moaning battle-frisbees, but she cannot tear her eyes or her mind away from Bevis long enough to think about finding cover. She sees him unfold the gun’s spindly arm-rest and wedge it into the crook of his elbow, and sees the small blue holes it makes in the backs of the Engineers’ coats. They fling up their arms and drop their guns and spin about and fall, and Bevis Pod watches them through the bucking sights with a calm, serious look, not her gentle Bevis any more but someone who can kill quite coldly, as if the Engineer in him really does have no regard for human life, or maybe he has just seen so much death in the Deep Gut that he thinks it is a little thing and does not mind dealing it out.

Pg 132/152, Chapter 32: Chudleigh Pomeroy Pulls it off, Mortal Engines