Chapter Eighteen
Breaking Orders
Rygnar
By the time I reached the upper terraces, smoke already crawled along the ceilings like low storm clouds. Pulse fire rolled through the mountain, echoing off the stone ribs.
The raiders had breached the ventilation shafts.
I moved through the heat, issuing orders as I ran. “Seal the west corridors. Get the children below the waterlines. Use the maintenance lifts if the main one is jam.”
Voices answered.
Each one a heartbeat.
Each silence, a warning.
Veklan intercepted me at the junction, armor scorched, one side of his face streaked with soot. “You’re alive. The pass is sealed?”
“Yes. But they came through the service tunnels.”
“Confirmed.” He pointed toward the lower galleries. “We’re evacuating civilians through the vents. Raiders split their forces—storage levels and infirmary. Mara stayed behind to cover them.”
“And Lina?”
His hesitation was enough.
“We got separated in the crush,” Mara said. “Then the raiders pushed through. Three of them drove into the east corridor. She didn’t come back out.”
I cut him off. “Where?”
“You wait until we regroup,” he said. “We can’t risk another loss.”
“Every second we wait, she gets farther away.”
“Rygnar.” His voice hardened. “I know what she means to you, but if you break formation—”
“She is part of this colony,” I said. “Our law says none are left behind.”
“Our law also says we live to protect the rest.” His grip tightened on my shoulder. “If you go now, you go alone.”
“Then I go alone.”
For a moment, I thought he would stop me.
Instead, something in his expression shifted—recognition, perhaps. Memory.
He released me. “One hour,” he said. “After that, we seal the tunnels.”
I nodded once. “That’s all I need.”
The outer galleries were chaos—smoke, shouts, and plasma fire cutting through the haze. Raiders had driven their vehicles into the lower chambers; engines growled like trapped beasts.
I moved through it like a shadow, armor dampening light. My visor tracked heat, motion, and heartbeats. Most colonists were evacuating. A few held the chokepoints.
Then—
Burned ozone.
Mara.
I found her near a collapsed bulkhead, one arm bleeding, the other steadying a young guard. She saw me and exhaled hard.
“We got separated in the crush,” Mara said. “Then the raiders pushed through. Three of them drove into the east corridor. She didn’t come back out.”
“How long?”
“Minutes. Maybe less.”
I gripped her uninjured shoulder. “Hold the line.”
She nodded once and turned back to the fight.
The eastern corridor reeked of oil and chemical sedatives.
Her torch lay near the wall, still burning—its handle bent under a boot.
I followed the tracks.
Three sets of prints, fresh, leading into the storage shafts. Toward the service lift. Toward the lower galleries where old mining equipment lay buried in dust.
I moved faster.
Voices carried up through the metal.
“…worth a fortune to the Enclave boys…”
“…or we keep her…”
My vision narrowed.
I dropped through the access hatch.
The first man turned too late. My rifle butt caught him under the jaw. Bone gave.
The second swung his weapon toward me.
I fired once.
He hit the bulkhead and slid down.
The third dragged Lina in front of him, arm locked around her throat, gun pressed to her temple.
“Stay back!” he shouted. “You move; she dies!”
Lina’s eyes met mine.
Alive. Aware.
“I don’t think she dies today,” I said.
He tightened his grip. “You care. I can see it—”
I moved.
Three steps. One breath.
His finger tightened—
My hand closed on his wrist. The gun twisted free. Bone broke.
Lina dropped low, twisting out of his hold.
I drove him back into the wall. The rifle discharged once, scorching the ceiling.
Then silence.
He sagged.
Didn’t rise.
Lina stumbled toward me, unsteady. The sedative cloth still clung to her hand.
Before she could fall, I caught her wrist and steadied her.
“Are you all right?”
“I will be.” Her voice shook but held. “You shouldn’t have come alone.”
“I didn’t,” I said.
She gave a breath of a laugh—frayed, real—and then she was against me, arms around my neck, holding tight.
I let her.
Only for a moment.
A new sound rolled through the tunnels—metal bending, engines forcing deeper.
She pulled back. “They’re not all gone.”
“No.”
I drew a sidearm from my belt and pressed it into her hand. “Stay behind me.”
She nodded.
We moved.
We fought our way back through smoke and debris, step by step, covering each other. By the time we reached the central hall, the guards had driven the remaining raiders toward the sealed tunnels.
The last shot echoed.
Then silence fell.
Veklan stood at the corridor entrance, eyes scanning. When he saw Lina upright, breathing, something in his stance eased.
“You disobeyed orders,” he said.
“Yes.”
“And you brought her back.”
A pause.
“The council will call it even.”
I clasped his forearm. “The mountain held.”
“For now,” he said. But there was something like pride beneath it.
Later, after the fires were out and the wounded tended, I found Lina outside the infirmary. Cold air drifted through the vents, carrying the scent of rain on stone.
She was sitting on the steps, bandaged but steady. When she saw me, she stood.
“You came for me.”
“I did.”
Her hand found mine, fingers still trembling.
“Maybe peace isn’t about hiding,” she said. “Maybe it’s choosing what’s worth the fight.”
I looked at her—at the certainty she carried even now—and thought she might be right.