Akur (Restitution #3)

Akur

1

Akur

Star date: Three cycles ago

The gravity beam sliced through the chaos like a blade of pure light, and everything went silent.

Akur’s ears rang from the explosion that had just rocked the Restitution’s base. Lifeblood trickled down his forehead, mixing with the sweat and grime of battle. Through the smoke, he glimpsed the massive Tasqal ship hovering above—its hull a nightmare of dark metal and pulsing energy nodes.

Time slowed. “Qrak.” It all but stopped.

Another boom rocked the area, and everything nearby—everything including him and the human he was carrying in his arms—vibrated with a hum that went straight down to his very cells. The ground beneath his feet crackled with building energy, making his nefre pulse in warning. That sixth sense all Shum’ai warriors possessed was screaming danger.

Gravity beam. They needed to run .

But he couldn’t move.

The beam was already active.

Distantly, he heard bodies fall. Heard them break. Rebels who had fought alongside him for many moons. Brothers he’d trained with, bled with, survived with—now scattered like nothing across their once thriving base.

The war they’d known was coming had finally arrived. The Tasqals had launched an all-out attack…but the Restitution hadn’t been ready.

“Hold on!” The command came from his comrade nearby. V’Alen fell to the ground, his cybernetic suit lighting up as he braced hard over the human he was protecting, and everything snapped back into place.

In a single click, time sped up once more.

Air rushed into his lungs as the particles around him began rising. And the light, that qrakking beam that had illuminated them just moments before, suddenly became like a living thing.

Gravity ceased to exist.

The human he’d been taking to safety was no longer in his arms. She floated out of them even as he tried to hold on. His digits barely brushed her arm as the beam lifted them both—suspended in a moment of weightlessness. A moment of terrible inevitability.

They were taking her. The Tasqals. They hadn’t only come for the new weapon hidden here on the Restitution’s base—that mysterious orb no one understood. They’d come for these females, too.

Grabbing the female’s arm, he held on with everything he had. Muscles straining, tendons pulled taut, his digits locked with hers while his other claw gripped the broken edge of a building.

But the gravity beam was a merciless thing—a column of light that defied Shum’ai strength, defied even his determination. The ground beneath him was breaking apart under the pull, his entire body a living anchor fighting against an impossible force.

But the beam was an unrelenting foe.

“Kon-stahns!!”

Kon…stahns. That was her name? It floated on the energy-infused air, a s trained cry that came from the lips of the human V’Alen braced over. But Kon-stahns didn’t respond. Instead, her gaze locked with his. Those strangely bright eyes—so blue they were almost white—held the quiet horror of someone watching their death approach. She scrambled to grab hold of the one thing anchoring her to the ground.

Him.

But it wasn’t enough.

His hold on her didn’t fail, but something else did. The piece of building he was gripping suddenly crumbled. In a moment of suspended time, he was floating with the human upward, his body frozen as if tied by invisible threads that prevented him from doing a thing.

His gaze flicked to the massive ship pulling them into itself before his focus shifted back to the human floating upside down just above him. There was nothing to grab, nothing to brace against. Just empty air and that strong pull upward. And like entering the maw of some beast while completely paralyzed, there was nothing he could do.

His greatest fear had come true.

So long wanting to end this war…but rendered completely helpless when it mattered most.

The moment the beam deposited them into the damned vessel was the exact moment the Tasqals’ minions, the Hedgeruds, descended. There was no time to think. He was grasping his blade before the thought even reached his mind. With a roar, it slid through flesh, taking one guard down. But there were too many. And the human…

She was gone.

“Kon-stahns!”

As more of the reptilian Hedgeruds converged, he spotted brown strands. Saw as the Hedgeruds dragged the human away with two others of her kind. Her blue-white eyes met his one final time, not with the terror he expected, but with something far more devastating.

Resignation.

It was a look that had him momentarily frozen. Enough for a Hedger ud to find an opening, a boot coming straight to his face as they kicked him backward.

That look in the human’s eyes was the last thing he saw before he was tumbling backward into thin air.

Frozen, he was wide-eyed as he fell. Wide-eyed and momentarily frozen. Because that look…

Kon-stahns had looked at him as if she expected him to fail.

As if she knew he would.

There was no gravity beam this time. Just plain old gravity and a distinctly clear view of the massive ship as he fell from it. Impact with the ground below felt like it destroyed every cell inside him. Breath left his lungs. His bones felt shattered. And yet he could only focus on that ship, watching as the vessel began moving.

Hands—metal, familiar—hauled him from the ground. Through the ringing in his ears, he heard V’Alen’s voice over the cacophony of destruction. The base was falling apart around them. Blaster rounds tore through buildings, their heat so intense it melted the reinforced walls into slag. The air itself seemed to burn with each explosion, thick with the stench of scorched metal and burning flesh.

Through his blurred vision, he saw rebels running, falling, dying . Some were crushed beneath collapsing structures; others cut down by Hedgerud forces that kept materializing from the smoke. More Tasqal ships passed overhead, carving through what remained of their defenses. More screams. More death.

So…after all these moons…this was how it ended?

Qrak that.

He tried to rise. All that happened was his limbs refused to cooperate.

As if far away and not right beside him, he heard V’Alen talking to the human he’d managed to keep grounded, her voice trembling as she worried about the one he’d lost. Kon-stahns. Meanwhile, somewhere in the chaos, medical teams were risking Hedgerud attacks by dragging the wounded to safety, their tunics stained with the multi-colored blood of different species. The Restitution had been more than j ust a rebellion—it had been home to warriors from across the stars.

Now they were all falling together.

“Go,” he ground out. V’Alen needed to go. Needed to take the human he was protecting before she was lost like the one he’d been trying to hold on to. Needed to get to that orb hidden somewhere on the base. The one these jekins had come for. V’Alen had to make sure this scum didn’t reach that orb first. And as for the humans that were just taken…

He would just have to deal with that himself.

Through the smoke, he glimpsed another building collapse, burying both rebels and Hedgeruds beneath its weight.

Move. They needed to move.

One moment, he was hauling himself away from where he’d fallen from that ship, the ground beneath his feet trembling with each new blast. The next, he was in the lift that led down to the bunkers, leaving behind a world on fire. The last thing he saw before the doors closed was a squad of rebels making their last stand, their weapons blazing against an enemy that kept coming, wave after merciless wave.

Reality swam and faded. Everything blurred into a haze of pain and motion. The lift carried him down into the safety of the bunker. V’Alen was there one moment, and the next, he was gone—likely to secure the weapon. Or perhaps it hadn’t been a single moment at all. Now there were other voices—broken, haunted things. The few survivors. A handful of humans with wide, haunted stares. Rebels with missing limbs and burned flesh. He heard the medic’s clipped tones. Felt the burning rush of infusions as they tried to knit his battered body back together.

But he couldn’t escape it—that stench from above still clung to his skin. The scent of smoking ruins and broken bodies. The smell of defeat . Of everything they’d built reduced to ash. The remnants of everything they’d fought for, years of sacrifice gone in moments.

And that darned ship.

He needed to go after it .

It wasn’t over yet.

He couldn’t let it end like this.

Staggering off the medical table despite the medic’s protests, he headed for the dock. His boots left smears of lifeblood on the floor. His? Someone else’s? He didn’t know.

He needed a ship. Any ship. The Tasqals wouldn’t get away with this. They wouldn’t get to write this rebellion out of history like all the others.

And he almost made it to a ship. Through the haze of pain, he barely made out the curved horns of the male that now blocked his path. Even in the dim emergency lighting, the fresh wounds across E’lot’s chest gleamed wet and raw.

Thank the stars. He was alive. One of the Restitution’s best fighters, still standing. He could barely grunt a breath of relief. At least not all was lost. Some rebels remained. Not everyone was dead. Not yet.

“Move.”

“Get back to the bunker, Akur.”

“The Tasqals…” He breathed. “They have humans. I saw the ship. I have to—”

“You can’t go.” E’lot made himself bigger. “You’re in no shape to go alone.”

“Try to stop me,” he grunted, brushing past the large male as he staggered toward a small shuttle. It was a little thing, barely worthy of taking into deep space, scorched and dented from debris—but there was no other option. It was either that or give up.

He was Shum’ai. He was built to persevere.

Weakness was not an option. Not when their enemies thought they’d won. Not when they needed to show that this rebellion wouldn’t die so easily.

And not when the haunting gaze of that bright-eyed female still scorched his memory. That quiet acceptance in her eyes had cut deeper than any weapon could, and he’d be damned if he’d prove her right.

Throwing the shuttle doors open, he glanced over his shoulder, vision waning as he looked back at the large male. E’lot stood there, covered in scars and fresh wounds, but with his chin tilted high.

Qrak. He wasn’t going to let him go alone, was he.

“Are you coming or not?”

E’lot huffed a breath through his nostrils, the septum ring he wore swaying with the motion, before he stepped forward. In his eyes burned the same fury, the same refusal to let this be the end.

Star date: Present time

Akur’s claws curled into fists, his knuckles blanching pale teal as he fought the urge to slam them into the console before him. Beside him, E’lot asked something. A question he barely heard, but one that manifested like a whisper ricocheting in his head, anyway.

What if they didn’t find the humans?

The ship that took them could be anywhere across the stars by now.

But he couldn’t accept that. Wouldn’t accept it. There had to be some sign of them, some trail to follow across this endless void. There was no other option.

Otherwise… Otherwise, he’d have to face the destruction left behind.

He’d have to face their loss.

His failure .

His claws dug into his palms, breaking the skin. Lifeblood swelled, but he barely felt the sting. His mouth curled in irritation instead.

“We’ve been searching for long, Akur.” There was a tinge of resignation in Elot’s voice. “We don’t know where to look.”

He was right. Their chances of finding the Tasqal ship were dismally low.

Perfectly healed now, he was thinking straight. That didn’t change the fa ct that he wasn’t turning back. But the void was vast, and the Tasqals cunning.

They had better weapons. A faster ship. Even with a damaged vessel, they were better off than the shuttle he and E’lot were using to chase after them. Not to mention that the Tasqals also had more resources—and a terrifying new warp technology neither of them understood.

“Perhaps we should return,” E’lot continued. “Help any survivors…”

Silence enveloped their little shuttle.

There was nothing left to return to. Both of them knew that. The Restitution’s base was a place that only now existed in their memories.

The qrakking Tasqals and their allies. The Council’s wrath on them all .

They couldn’t go back. Accepting defeat felt like betrayal. His pride refused to let him. But they’d searched every outpost and space station in every direction and found nothing . No ion trails. No whispers of that ship or the human captives trapped on it. It was as if the ship with the females had simply…vanished.

His gaze slid to E’lot sitting over at the secondary controls. They stared at each other, golden eyes meeting brown, a silent battle of wills. When Akur didn’t respond, E’lot released a breath of hot air through his nose.

The humans were out there, lost among the stars. And it was up to him and E’lot to find them. There was no one else.

There was no one left.

“We’ll find them,” he grated. And they would. They’d find them before the Tasqals could use them for whatever purpose they intended. Because he wasn’t going to sacrifice everything only to end up losing in the end.

The Tasqals had finally revealed their weakness—their obsession with both the “orb” weapon and these humans from a distant world. The Restitution had possessed both. Now, retrieving those humans was the only way to deny their enemy what they needed most .

But…that wasn’t the only reason for his stubbornness, was it…

She was out there. Kon-stahns. The one that had looked at him like he’d failed. The shame ate at him like acid. He was Akur the Undefeated. And she was just another human. Someone else he had to rescue.

Yet…

Akur frowned, staring out the viewscreen.

Yet he remembered her face. Those bright eyes. Couldn’t get past that final look she gave him.

And that’s probably why he wanted to get her back so badly.

Flexing his bloodied hand, he fought to still the tremor that went through it. Just thinking about the state of everything he left behind made the nefre running along his nape writhe and pulse with agitation.

They had to find that ship.

“There’s still nothing on the scans,” E’lot’s grim voice broke through his thoughts once again, causing his gaze to refocus on the viewscreen. Out there, the endless void stared back at him. Cold, empty, and lifeless, just like the organ that should be beating at the center of his chest.

“Keep looking,” he growled. “They couldn’t have just disappeared.”

But…they might have. That new tech the Tasqals had—the one that allowed them to warp right into the Restitution’s base, past all their defenses—that technology meant anything was possible.

Staring blindly at the console before him, his claws spasmed again, desperate for an enemy to tear into. There had to be something he could still do. Somewhere he could channel this simmering rage and guilt into action.

“They must have gone into hyperspace.” E’lot glanced his way.

Akur kept his gaze on the viewscreen because E’lot’s suggestion was a possibility he refused to consider. If that ship had managed to jump, any chance of ever finding the qrakking scum was gone.

“V’Alen damaged the engines,” he said instead.

“And if that didn’t slow them down? ”

But E’lot’s logic only stoked his anger.

Releasing a breath, Akur closed his eyes for a moment, but those anger management classes the Council had forced him to take were obviously useless.

Without a word, he slammed a fist into the control panel before him, momentarily causing the buttons to blink in staggered confusion as his command went unrecognized. Pain shot up the wound in his palm, and he welcomed the sting.

E’lot glanced his way before a breath heaved in his chest once more. Running a hand over his curved horns, the ring in his nose jangled once more as he exhaled and stood.

“If we can’t find them…” There was an edge to E’lot’s tone as he stood there, facing the rear of the ship. It was a note he hadn’t ever heard in the warrior’s voice before. One etched with doubt. Defeat. Was he giving up, too?

A growl rumbled in Akur’s chest. “We will find them.”

Them. Her . He had to believe that or spiral into the same despair he was sensing in E’lot’s tone. The Restitution was gone, but they were still alive. That had to mean something . The urge to see every last Tasqal die at the tips of his claws was all that was keeping him focused on this desperate journey.

“We should stop at the next station.” E’lot rolled his shoulders. “Regroup. Find what’s left of the rest of us. Make a plan.” E’lot was right, but his words fell like sharp knives.

Lips curled, Akur pulled his attention from the viewscreen and looked up at his comrade. “Why come along if you think our chances so dim?”

E’lot’s eyes narrowed only slightly before he rolled his huge shoulders again, bones cracking and muscles rippling. E’lot was one of the few warriors that could match him in a fight. But no aggression came from his comrade. There was no pushback. Not right now. “I wasn’t going to let you come out here to die alone.”

As E’lot’s heavy footsteps faded as he headed to the rear of the ship, guilt tweaked Akur’s conscience. He was not the only one who had lost everything .

Subtly, Akur rubbed the nefre at his nape, trying to ease the strange tingling within it. “We’ll find them.” But he wasn’t sure E’lot even heard. Wasn’t sure he even said it loud enough. Because…what if he was wrong? What if he was stubbornly trying to deny the fact this was, indeed, the end?

What if even the humans knew it? What if that look in that female’s eyes…what if even Kon-stahns knew?

Qrakking crukks.

His nefre pulsed again, and he brushed a palm over it roughly, annoyed at the insistent pulses going through it. Eyes on the void, he willed something to happen. Anything.

The answer was there; he simply had to find it. Even if he had to search through every star chart, trajectory, and smuggler’s route in the quadrant, he’d find them. The Restitution couldn’t end like this. On such a pitiful note. Not after all these orbits. He would tear apart the whole qrakking universe if he had to.

It was the only purpose he had left.

And that’s when he saw it. A blip on the screen. A single flash of fine light in a sea of nothing. He stiffened in his seat, staring at the spot where the blip had occurred. There was nothing there now. Almost as if it didn’t happen. But he knew he saw it. A spark of hope in a sea of darkness.

His nefre pulsed as he leaned closer to the screen, staring at the coordinates as they generated before him. He felt his mouth curl, a snarl rising on his lips.

It was them. He was sure of it.

A long shot, but they had nothing else to go on.

And this time, he wouldn’t fail.