Chapter 24
“Last chance.” The tablet relays the general’s communication. “What is in this system that we can use? You are protecting something.”
I slump forward and tip sideways from the weakness in my body. “We protect each other. Life. This system is low in ore, medicine, food. There is not extra. Talhuskins destroyed our planet. Drathious are now dependent here. So it is useless to fight for it.”
“Not useless if we kill all of you,” he replies.
He confirms what we all feared. They kill so stealing is easier.
I strain to catch my breath so I can speak.
It’s the only thing I can do to delay my end.
And I just want a few more moments to remember Brynna’s love, her soft touch, and the heat of her holding me tightly.
“Denarso have wrecked Lasyrella in the next system with scavengers. There is nothing left there. No one to fight… Nothing to take. You will have to travel…outside of our galaxy…to find things to steal without a fight.”
“We have many more colonies.”
“Eleven.” I fight to lift my heavy head and glare up at him as best as I can.
He squints at me like he didn’t anticipate me knowing. “Who is your source?”
“Technology.”
“You must have a rat on the inside.”
I shake my head and instantly regret it. The room tips, and my head feels like it is filled with liquid. “What happened to your world?”
He clicks an angry pattern. “It is dead.”
I wonder why. “Did you try to stop it? Or did you just blast your way through…sacrificing your lessers like you did here?”
He backhands me across the face, and I smash against the floor. The soldiers around him cheer and encourage his savagery.
I spit the blood from my mouth and gasp for air. “I would not send my son to fight my battles. I would keep him safe…so he could fight his own…when I am gone.”
He sets his boot on my throat and applies pressure. “You do not understand our struggles.”
“You do not care about ours,” I wheeze beneath his boot.
“You’re right.” He cocks his head. “I do not.”
“General Kaslok.” A Neb steps forward.
“Not now.” The general growls as he clicks at me. “You are a disgrace to your kind. And you have been a poison in my fleet. Any last words?”
“Sir!”
The Neb spins a tablet around. I strain to catch a glimpse of whatever is so important that he would interrupt his general. It displays a video feed of a mass of soldiers flooding the prison bay that the beast dragged me through. “We’ve been boarded.”
“By who?” General Kaslok demands.
The Neb looks at me.
“Drathious?” the general asks.
“Yes and Amphirans. A Lazariot. Humans.”
Human?
I blink harder as red lights flash throughout the ship. Sirens blare.
And there, on the screen, in front of the group, is the most gorgeous female I’ve ever seen, her human skin laced with fire in her blood, synthetic wings shielding a crew of my closest friends as they all fire weapons, shooting down Nebs with ruthless force.
“Jor-s-k. DIA. D…you…ead?”
I strain to look down at my wristband, but my throat is still under General Kaslok’s boot. He roars, and his body starts smoking. “Get them off of this ship!”
The other soldiers in the room with us funnel for the exit, minus two, who remain with him, no doubt as his personal guards.
“Sir, we should go.” The tablet continues translating. “The prison system is compromised.”
“What do you mean?” the general demands.
“They’ve let them out.”
“How many?” General Kaslok demands.
The Neb cringes in anticipation of backlash. “Everyone.”
The ship jolts, knocking the translation tablet off the throne.
It cracks and displays a four-way split screen of rotating camera feeds.
Elix and Zariah arm prisoners and take over the lower levels.
I look through the glass floor to see Elix’s green face leading a flood of scrappy prisoners into the munitions bays.
My Drath team torches Neb soldiers as they rush out of the crew quarters. Osiris blasts through the enemy on a set of rocket boots he appears to be enjoying. The symbols of vengeance on his face blaze orange as his body blackens and cracks open with his Inferno.
The ship jolts again, and the smoky shield over the windows fades. Stars become visible like the familiar Orillium darting by the glass.
Allele.
On the cracked translation tablet, I see my female withdraw a glowing sword from a sparking shield control panel. She swings the sword with skill and slips it back between her shoulders.
A flash of green electricity lights up the tablet as General Kaslok and his guards argue above me. He doesn’t want to leave. He wants vengeance for his son.
“You won’t get it if you’re dead!” one insists.
They finally manage to lead him away from me and toward an escape pod in the side of the room.
In another window, Aura straightens, demented green electric fingers lashing through soldiers with sinister intent. Twenty Neb soldiers collapse. Brynna charges around him, folds her wings back, and darts through a doorway.
Boots thump behind me. Metal parts ratchet and quiet. A gentle hand touches my shoulder as a female in a Hellion suit drops to her knees beside me. She opens her helmet. “Jorusk…”
I squint up at her and barely make out Brynna’s face.
“Bryn…”
“Hush.” She pushes aside my collar. A pinch to my neck makes me wince. Whatever she’s given me spreads heat through my body.
She runs her hands over my broken wings with pained noises. “Deep breath.”
I try. Stars, do I try.
She sets my wings one at a time.
“Oh, Mother in Magmium!” I wheeze as the scourge of pain tears through me. Heat rushes into the breaks.
The tablet shows my Drath brothers in a furious battle with Neb soldiers in the engine rooms. Another window exposes Blaize pushing back Nebs with angry electric balls of fury until they start to flee in escape pods.
Outside, Allele shoots them with gelatinous green blobs. Their engines fail, and they float aimlessly into space.
“Jorusk, hey.” Brynna touches my face and summons my eyes to hers. “It’s going to be okay. Just stay with me.”
When she kisses me, I wonder why. I’m a bloodied disaster.
But there’s something more, something in her scent that stirs my Inferno with increasing energy.
It wakes inside my chest. I force my eyes shut, then open them to look up at her more clearly, trying to sort the change in her aroma through the medicine and the poison and pain. “Are you…”
“We’re fine.” Brynna smiles at me. “We broke this ship free. But we’ve got to get a hangar open so we can get allies in here to help with all the Nebs.”
I direct her to the tablet, still unsure if I’m detecting what I think I am. “General Kaslok is trying to escape. He’s in a pod.”
Brynna touches her ear. “I need Zariah on the bridge. And someone needs to get that pod launching from general’s quarters. He’s beaten the crap out of Jorusk.”
Aura hurries in and helps me sit up, then carefully works to remove the chains.
A clicking roar enters the doorway. I look up to see the beastly Nebulous soldier that dragged me up here charging toward us, a handgun aimed right for me.
A metal wing unfolds around Aura and me, deflecting his shots. Rapid gunfire booms above my head. Brynna growls as she shoots him over and over until finally, he drops his gun and falls. There’s fire in her eyes like I’ve never seen.
“No one hurts my mate and gets away with it.” Brynna lowers her gun, folds up her wings into a pack against her back, and looks again at the tablet. “Fucker.”
Zariah enters seconds later with Elix guarding her back. She takes the tablet and studies it.
“Can you understand it?” Aura asks.
She nods and works for a second. The red alerts switch off, and the ship begins to move into a firing position toward the rest of the Neb armada still at war. “I have control.”
Brynna high-fives her while Elix looks over Zariah’s shoulder.
“Osiris, pod launching now,” Elix calls out.
Outside, a Drathious with rocket boots flies into space after the pod. He catches up, and seconds later, it blooms in a cloud of fire and parts. Another Drathious collides with Osiris.
“Got him. Returning to Mesannok,” Vryskas reports.
Fire blooms in the hallway.
“Jeeze, watch it! Crazy female.” Fieri brushes ash from his hair as he steps into the room. “Aura. A hangar?”
Zariah keeps working on the tablet. “Opening bays with functioning sealscreens, now.”
Mother Cinuska sashays by Fieri with a smoldering glance over at him. Smoke trails her old-fashioned armor. When she sees me, she releases her mask back behind her ears and gently cradles one of my healing wings.
She closes her eyes. Her hands heat and make the flare of pain subside faster than I’m used to.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
She opens her eyes. “You are not the only Drath who is different. And I wasn’t leaving the last of my boys to fight out here alone.”
While Mother Cinuska heals my wings, I gather my strength. “Aura?”
He squats beside me. “My friend.”
“You took Mesannok.”
He draws my forehead to his. “We came for you. This was never the plan. Claiming the vessel is only a bonus to saving you.”
A crashing sound tears through the walls. I look up as a Talhuskin in a star suit smashes into Brynna. She screeches as he shoves her through shattering glass walls and down into the munitions cavern below.
I rip my wings from Mother Cinuska and am on my feet running toward the hole he’s made without a second’s thought. “Brynna!”
I dive below, spread my wings, and pray to Magmium that my Inferno is enough to carry my battered body to my mate.
My Inferno ignites, covering me in fire. My wings catch the air and burn as they launch me after her.
They cannot take her! Not now! Not after everything!
Everyone fighting in the lower munitions bay glances up as the Talhuskin strains to keep his grip on Brynna. She fights hard and curses at him as he darts around bend after bend, carrying her toward a hangar with a ship with a dropped ramp. It begins closing the moment we enter the hangar.