Maris
They marched us toward the docking bay. Thirty Consortium soldiers for two people. Either massive overkill or they’d read Thoryn’s file. Probably both.
I cataloged our situation. Three transports visible through the bay doors.
My stolen ship sitting there like a monument to Vashil’s betrayal.
Forty-seven meters to the nearest cover, which wouldn’t stop a determined sneeze.
Thoryn bleeding through his shirt, leaving a trail of drops on the deck plating.
My blaster confiscated, but they’d missed the knife in my boot.
Amateur hour. Vashil walking ahead of us, not even bothering to look back. That would cost her.
Thoryn stumbled. Just slightly, but I caught it. The stimulants they’d given him were wearing off. At this rate, he had maybe twenty minutes before he passed out. Less if he had to fight.
“Move faster,” the soldier behind me said, prodding me with his rifle.
I considered seventeen different ways to take that rifle and shove it somewhere uncomfortable. Filed them for later.
The docking bay was a hive of activity. Soldiers loading equipment. Medics treating the injured from our fight. A command post being dismantled. Vashil had brought an entire operation just to collect us. I wasn’t sure if I should be flattered or just annoyed.
“Load them on transport two,” Vashil ordered, still not looking at us. “Separate cells. I want—”
The universe exploded.
The first missile hit the leftmost transport, turning it into superheated scrap metal. The second and third hit simultaneously, taking out the command post and most of the soldiers near it. The concussion knocked everyone off their feet, including me.
That firing pattern. Overlapping coverage, maximum destruction, zero warning. It wasn’t Consortium chaos. It was precise, military-grade, and aimed exclusively at Vashil’s forces.
There was only one answer.
The Raptor.
She dropped out of jump-space directly above the docking bay, which was insane. You didn’t jump that close to a structure unless you had a death wish or a pilot who thought physics was more of a suggestion than a law.
An insane pilot. Had to be.
The Raptor’s belly guns opened up. Not the big cannons—those would have destroyed the entire station.
These were the anti-personnel turrets, designed to turn infantry into memory.
The Consortium soldiers scattered, looking for cover that didn’t exist. When a military frigate decides to rain death from above, cover is largely theoretical.
“Return fire!” someone shouted. Might have been Vashil. Hard to tell over the sound of the universe ending.
The soldiers who still had functional weapons started shooting at the Raptor. Small arms fire against military-grade hull plating. Like throwing pebbles at a mountain.
I rolled toward Thoryn. He’d gone down hard, dazed by the blast, and wasn’t moving. Blood pooled under him, more than before. The fall must have torn his wounds open again.
“Can you move?” I shouted over the chaos.
“Define move.” His voice was weak but he was conscious. Good enough.
The Raptor’s boarding ramp dropped. Exposing the interior during a firefight was madness. But then the crew Thoryn had described in the stories he’d told during those hours of waiting appeared at the top of the ramp, and I understood.
The Khavi commander, Serak, moved like smoke, his pale, pupil-less eyes sweeping the battlefield. Soldiers just... stopped. Not fear exactly. More like their brains couldn’t quite process what they were seeing. Shadow-meld. Thoryn had tried to explain it. I’d never seen it.
The human woman he’d called Jessa came next, laying down precise covering fire. The bonded pair, Ressh and his human mate Alix, flanked her, moving in perfect sync. He’d said they were “one weapon in two bodies.” He wasn’t wrong.
And then the Rokavai, Solren.
Thank the Dark.
The medic dropped from the ramp and headed straight for us.
Through the firefight. Through the explosions.
Like combat was a minor inconvenience between him and his patient.
Three soldiers tried to stop him. He put them down without breaking stride.
Not dead—apparently he didn’t kill unless necessary—but they weren’t getting up soon.
“About time,” I said when he reached us.
“My apologies. The welcoming committee was rude.” He was already assessing Thoryn, pulling out field dressings. “How much blood has he lost?”
“Most of it.”
“Helpful.” He slapped a pressure bandage on the worst wound. “Can he walk?”
“I can walk,” Thoryn said, then immediately proved himself a liar by failing to stand.
Solren sighed and threw Thoryn over his shoulder. I shook my head at the display of Rokavai strength. Thoryn, all seven feet and three hundred pounds of him, might as well have been a sack of flour.
“Move,” Solren ordered.
We moved—forty-seven meters of chaos between us and the Raptor. Soldiers shooting. Serak appearing behind them like a nightmare. Jessa and her team laying down covering fire. A man I didn’t recognize in the Raptor’s doorway with some kind of modified mining laser that turned cover into slag.
Halfway there, I saw Vashil.
She was behind an overturned cargo container, shouting into a comm unit. Calling for backup, probably. Or trying to salvage her payment. She looked up, saw me seeing her.
Our eyes met across the battlefield.
She ran.
Smart. But not smart enough.
“Get him inside,” I told Solren. “I’ll catch up.”
“Maris—” Thoryn started.
“Go.”
Solren didn’t argue. He hauled Thoryn toward the Raptor. I went after Vashil.
She’d ducked into a maintenance corridor. Mistake. I knew every maintenance corridor in every station like this. They all followed the same basic design principles. Predictable.
I found her at a locked access hatch, frantically entering override codes.
“They changed those codes three cycles ago,” I said.
She spun, hand going for her weapon. I already had the knife from my boot. I didn’t hesitate. Muscle memory took over. The knife left my hand before she cleared the holster, hit her wrist, sent the blaster spinning away.
“You shot my guard,” I said, advancing. “Jax. Remember him? Good man. Had three kids.”
“It’s business,” she said, backing against the hatch. “You understand business.”
“I do.” I picked up her blaster, checked the charge. Full. “Which is why I’m going to make this quick.”
“Wait.” She raised her hands. “I have information. About the Consortium. About what they’re planning. I can—”
“No.”
“Maris, please. You showed mercy before. You can—”
“That was my mistake.” I aimed at her head. “I don’t make the same mistake twice.”
She paled. “You’re not a killer. Not anymore. Your bondmate changed you. Made you soft.”
“No,” I said. “He made me remember who I was before I became what grief made me. But you’re right about one thing. I’m not a killer.”
Relief flickered across her face.
“I’m the one who lives.”
I shot her. Clean, between the eyes. She dropped instantly. No suffering. More than she deserved, less than she’d have gotten if I’d let anger decide.
I stood over her body for a moment. Waiting to feel something. Regret, satisfaction, closure.
Nothing. Just another problem solved.
The station shook. More explosions. Time to go.
I ran back to the docking bay. The Raptor was still hovering, ramp down, crew laying down suppressing fire. Most of the Consortium soldiers were down or had fled. The smart ones, anyway.
“Move your ass!” Jessa shouted from the ramp.
I moved my ass.
The moment I hit the ramp, the pilot lifted off. The acceleration knocked me flat, but Ressh caught me before I slid back out.
“Welcome aboard,” he said.
“Where’s Thoryn?”
“Medbay. Solren’s got him.”
I was already moving, pushing through the corridors of the Raptor. The ship felt solid, lived-in. Home.
The medbay door was open. Thoryn was on the primary biobed, Solren working over him. There was a lot of blood. Too much blood.
“How bad?” I said.
“He’ll live.” Solren didn’t look up from his work. “The blade wound reopened completely. Significant blood loss. Infection in the plasma burn. Three cracked ribs. Electrical burns from the shock weapons. And whatever the hell they injected him with is reacting badly with his Tamzari physiology.”
“But he’ll live?”
“I just said that.” Now he looked up, fixing me with those unsettling Rokavai eyes. “He’ll need at least a week of recovery. Real recovery, not the ‘I’m fine let me fight’ nonsense you both seem to favor.”
“A week,” I repeated.
“Minimum.”
I looked at Thoryn. Unconscious, pale under his scales, but breathing. The biobed’s readouts showed stable vitals. Improving, actually.
He’d live.
The adrenaline drained out of me all at once. I sat down hard on the visitor’s chair before my legs gave out.
“You’re injured too,” Solren noted.
I looked down. Blood on my shirt. Not Thoryn’s. Mine. A graze across my ribs I hadn’t even noticed. Another on my shoulder. Various bruises making themselves known now that the fight was over.
“It can wait,” I said.
“No, it can’t.” He pressed a dermal regenerator into my hand. “Fix yourself while I fix him. That’s an order.”
“You’re not my doctor.”
“I am now. Unless you’d prefer to find another medic who’ll patch you up after suicidal rescue missions.”
Fair point.
I ran the regenerator over the worst wounds while Solren worked. The medbay was quiet except for the hum of machinery and the occasional beep from the monitors. Peaceful, almost.
Serak appeared in the doorway. “Vashil?”
“Dead.”
He nodded. No judgment, no questions. Just acceptance.
“The data caches?” he asked.
“Still have them.” I pulled the three chips from my pocket. Somehow, through everything, I’d kept them. “Your data guy will want these.”
“He will. But it can wait.” He studied me for a moment. “You did well.”
“I got us captured.”
“You survived. Both of you. That’s what matters.”
He left before I could argue.
Jessa showed up next, carrying tea. Because of course she did. The woman who looked like a friendly aunt had just helped storm a station, and her first priority was tea.
“Figured you could use this,” she said, pressing the mug into my hands.
It was perfect. Exactly the right temperature, exactly the right strength. I didn’t even like tea. This was exactly what I needed.
“Thank you,” I said. “For the for the tea. For the rescue. But how did you know? Vashil said she sent a message from my comms. Told you to stand down, that we were going dark.”
Jessa smiled, and it wasn't friendly. It was the satisfied smile of a sniper who'd hit a long-distance shot. “Oh, she did. Sent it from your comms and everything, clear as day. Problem for her is, she sent it while she was also coordinating a Consortium capture team on a separate channel.”
She tapped her temple. “Deyric monitors all Consortium frequencies in any system we enter. He saw Vashil’s encrypted orders to her 'capture team' spike at the exact same nanosecond as your 'stand down' message. He knew it was a trap before Serak even finished reading it.”
“So you came early,” I said, the relief making my voice rough.
“We came fast,” Jessa corrected, squeezing my shoulder. “Family doesn’t thank family for doing their job. Now, drink your tea. We’ll be jumping to the backup coordinates in twenty minutes. You should strap in.”
“I’m staying here.”
She looked at Thoryn, then at me. Smiled. “Of course you are. I’ll have Zevik prioritize the inertial dampeners in here.”
She left too.
I sat there, drinking tea I didn’t like, watching Thoryn breathe. The monitors showed steady improvement. His scales were starting to shift again, damaged ones trying to match the healthy emerald of the others.
We’d survived. Barely, bloodily, but we’d survived.
Vashil was dead. The immediate threat was over. We had the data that would expose the Consortium’s crimes.
So why didn’t I feel victorious?
Maybe because victory wasn’t the point anymore. Survival was. And we’d managed that, at least for today.
I didn’t know what came next. But for the first time in years, the future didn’t feel like a threat.
The ship jumped. The familiar sensation of reality bending, then snapping back into place. We were away. Safe, for whatever that was worth.
I reached out and took Thoryn’s hand. His fingers were cold but they tightened slightly around mine. Still unconscious, but some part of him knew I was there.
“We made it,” I told him, even though he couldn’t hear me. “We actually made it.”