Chapter 14 Aera
Evo changes as he breathes out. His skin shimmers orange, and his armor begins to glow like hot iron.
The way he looks down at me makes me afraid of the consequences of what he’s about to do.
But he doesn’t give me a chance to tell him to be careful.
He simply charges at the door and punches through.
Molten metal drips from the Titan-shaped hole he’s made.
I don’t stay where he told me to. Lifting my rifle, I follow him to the doorway and peer inside. Gunfire goes off in front of Evo. He stops and looks down.
Panic flashes through me in an acrid wave.
He snarls, “Can’t burn something already simmering... Commander Hazareth.”
Evo drags the Solcrue to a pedestal and smashes his face against a scanner.
The flashing lights in the ceiling steady and brighten to white.
Then Evo drops him to the floor, sets a boot on the commander’s back, and holds him down while he uses the Solcrue’s fingers to unlock a drawer in the pedestal.
Evo tears out a drive that melts in his hand.
A shot rips by my head, singeing some of my loose hair.
“Bitch!” I whip around and take shelter in the recess of Commander Hazareth’s door to return fire. I am not interested in saving bullets. I should be. But the moment the soldier falls, I hurry down the hallway, collect his handgun, and take the extra ammo from his belt.
“Get off me!”
I look up to see Sythius front-kick a soldier down the hallway. “For my mother, you piece of shit.”
He aims a gun at the soldier and fires. When the other Solcrue falls back dead, Sythius sighs. “Stars, I wish our kind weren’t so closed-minded.”
I ease behind the shelter of a pillar to watch as Jeris joins him.
“Perfection or elimination.” Jeris nods. “Perhaps their mission to be perfect is what made them blind to the strengths of imperfections.”
“What are you, a fucking poet now?”
“Shut up, man. I just think that if everything is shiny and new, there is no desire to improve it, so we stop trying. Then we fall into the trap of monotonous assimilation led by whoever is power hungry enough to make the shifts toward their preferred way of life while keeping the alterations subtle enough that we don’t know we’re in hot water until it starts to burn. ”
Sythius hisses a note of distaste. “You’re spending too much time around Celeste.”
“Her father saved my life, giving me legs, you selfish cocksucker. Sefina showed you mercy when you treated her like shit.”
Sythius fumes as he looks away.
Jeris punches him in the shoulder.
“What?” Sythius snarls.
“We had fucked up parental figures. We learned. Let’s not fight about it.”
“Yeah, whatever.” Sythius motions for Jeris to lead, then follows him down the hallway, picking bodies clean of armor and weapons as they go.
I return to the commander’s room. Stepping inside, I find Evo has Hazareth pressed to the wall and holds him off the floor by his throat.
Evo’s skin has turned green and covered in faint scales. He hisses at the commander through pointed teeth. It is a terrifying sight. “You will die ssslowly ssso you understand the hopelessnesss of those you have killed.”
“That you killed,” Commander Hazareth rasps with a sickening grin on his face. “Shannassi.”
Evo growls. His celestial colors fade through as he regains control of his shift. “Your kind will never control me again.”
“We did it once. We can do it again.” Commander Hazareth’s veins rise in his forehead. “Eat shit, metal head.”
I see the coilgun in the Commander’s hand. Evo doesn’t.
I don’t hesitate.
Evo looks down as my bullet shreds the device and sends the pieces falling to the floor. His attention darts to me in surprise, then back to Hazareth with fury. His face contorts as his body shimmers, and his armor begins to do the same.
Commander Hazareth strains and cries out like I’ve never seen a Solcrue do. They do not cry or beg. They are far too proud.
Hazareth’s body fractures with light, and then he puffs into a cloud of light and falls like green and black dust.
Fear of his capabilities makes me hunker away from him.
Evo staggers back a step and looks down at his hands like he doesn’t understand what happened.
Watching Evo turn a Solcrue to dust makes me uncertain if I want to touch him again. The confusion on Evo’s face tells me that wasn’t what he expected either.
While Evo leans against the commander’s desk, I give him some space and rummage through the officer’s quarters. He has tons of stashed away uniforms, weapons, ammo, food, water, and more. Then I slide open a closet door and see a pair of eyes looking up at me.
“Shit. Evo!” I squat before the woman curled up in the back of a closet. “Hey.”
The woman shudders and tucks herself deeper into the closet.
I open my helmet and show her my face. “I’m Aera. I’m an Omega Force soldier. Would you like to be among humans again? My colony isn’t far. ”
She cries as she crawls out of the closet. The woman wears the gray shift of a Solcruean officer’s anaja, and bears the infinity serpent mark of a practice mate on her wrist. I sling my rifle over my back and help her get to her feet.
“Let me carry her,” Evo says, walking up to us.
The woman scrambles away from him, like he’s terrified of Evo.
“Don’t touch her.” I glare at him as I pull one of her arms across my shoulders and wrap my arm around her waist. “She just saw you turn into a Solcrue, then turn Hazareth to dust. So how about you make sure we don’t join him while we get her a ride off of this beast?”
Evo’s expression fades into apathy. He readies his guns in front of him, checking the hallway before leading us through the passages and to the hangars in the top of the ship.
Evo>>Local: Self-destruct offline. Drive removed and crushed. Transports safe to dock.
We stop just inside the hangar. Sealscreens ignite, and a dark Titan flies through the air, moving from hangar door to hangar door, manually opening us to space. Rebel ships hover inside and dock as Titans and Rebels pool supplies.
Reidar’s ship is the last to set down and lower its ramp.
“What’s your name?” I ask her.
She hangs heavily from me like she’s struggling to stay upright. “Daphne.”
I walk around Evo and help Daphne up the ramp. “Reidar?”
He flings the belts off of him and hops up from his seat. “I didn’t think they had civilians on warships.”
“Looks like commanders still do. Can you help her get belted in? I want to assist with cargo.”
“Definitely.” Reidar is quickly under her other side, walking her up to a seat behind his copilot. She is thin, but I’m relieved to be free of her weight. I’m still not fully recuperated myself. An hour nap in two days on limited food and water is not ideal.
As I hike back down the ramp, Rebels and Titans cart supplies up from the main hangar. Sixteen ships load up quickly. I carry what I can and strap crates and boxes to Reidar’s walkways.
The speakers boom overhead. “Rogue Fleet, this is your new captain, Navi. We have incoming forces. ETA six minutes. Their shields are up.”
Savage climbs up a pillar and calls out to the crews, “Last items, now. Leave the rest. Secure and eject! Portal out as fast as you’re able.”
Evo passes me to set a crate of water on the floor of Reidar’s ship, then turns to leave.
“Where are you going?” I call after him.
He glances back at me with shame in his eyes. “Navi and Craze have requested my help on the bridge. I am staying with them.”
I’m suddenly torn between escaping with our crews and helping Evo. But when Reidar starts closing the ramp, I realize I can’t leave Evo, not when he’s beating himself up over something I realize wasn’t his fault. And I haven’t apologized for snapping at him.
I run down the ramp and jump off the edge, catching up with Evo as he exits the hangar. Reidar’s ship is the last one out of the doors. The moment he’s free, Evo taps a button on the wall by the personnel door, and the hangar doors close.
He seems surprised and panicked to see me. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to go with them!”
“So were you.” I push him into the hallway and let the door to the hangars close behind us. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. I’ve not seen someone spontaneously combust before. And you turning into a Solcrue was creepy as hell.”
He hurries toward the front of the ship. “This is why I did not want you to see my natural form. And I take on qualities of anything conductive that I touch, Solcrue included.”
As we run, I lift my hands showing him that I don’t want to fight about it. “It’s fine. I was reacting because of my panic and concern about Daphne’s fragile condition. I will deal with it.”
“But why stay?” Evo descends a broad set of steps to the bridge where Navi and Craze sit in the pilots’ seats.
“Couldn’t leave you.”
His brows quirk like he doesn’t understand the reasoning.
“Evo... Perfect timing.” Craze twists to look back at us.
“What’s the problem?”
“We can’t access the hangar with the emissary cruisers.
RamBash tried to break in. But when this ship is toast, we need a way out.
I had hoped we could hang onto it a bit longer.
But now we have to confront the enemy and make sure this ship isn’t salvageable so they don’t get it back.
It won’t fit through Toriszi’s portal. We didn’t have time to move the portal generators from Centurion. ”
Evo walks over to a screen between Craze and Navi, inspects a device sticking out of the dash, and glances between them.
“Esthi engineered that. She hacked Motherships Marst and Vessna. Hadn’t tried a primarily militaristic vessel like Corenge, so this was experimental,” Navi offers.
Evo looks over a few settings. Makes some adjustments, rests his hand on the screen, closes his eyes, and a countdown starts. “Time to go.”
Red alerts flash in the cabin.