Chapter 8 Into The Rising Light #3
Idan ripped through the space, heat-seeking for one soul, and one soul only.
He found Sheba collapsed next to a collapsed column as a blaze around her burned down to embers.
Dirt streaked her skin, and blood darkened her side, her weapon flung aside.
A dark scorch mark on the pillar told the story of a raider’s gun turrets aiming at her.
However, she was conscious, and her eyes tracked his movement with fierce clarity as he rolled the pillar away from her.
‘Idan?’
‘Sheba,’ he rasped, dropping to his knees beside her, gathering her up in his arms.
‘Thank heavens you’re here,’ she whispered, leaning into him, her breath tortured.
‘How hurt are you?’ he growled, his heart contracting with wild emotion.
‘I’m alive,’ she grumbled, running her hands over her flank, wincing as she encountered a laceration to her shoulder, above the line of her tee’s sleeve.
He checked it with care and grunted. ‘Tis a flesh wound, but you’ve lost a good amount of blood.’
‘I’ll be sawa, but that ratfokkin’ bastard came to wipe us out,’ she muttered between gritted teeth. ‘Imani is gone, and so is Brad. So much destruction and death, Idan. Why?’
Idan took an inhale, tamping down his fury.
‘I don’t know, but he will pay for his reckless evil,’ he growled.
She slumped onto him, eyes, head bowed, the loss and shock causing her body to shudder. He glided his calloused hands over her uninjured deltoids and back, and in time she calmed and stilled.
Tilting her head up to him, she took a breath. ‘We need to help the survivors.’
‘That wound requires treatment,’ he rasped.
‘Nada, the others come first.’
The unyielding grit in her tone convinced Idan, and he rose, helping her up.
She tore at her tee and wrapped a strip of material tightly across her shoulder, sealing the wound.
With a jerk of her chin to him, she plunged into the chaos with him close behind.
Hours passed in a blur of rescue and triage as the pair advanced through the devastation with grim economy.
Idan lifted fallen beams, cleared paths, and hauled those hurt free while Sheba patched up the injured.
In a few cases that were appalling and critical, he stepped in and took them on.
The golden radiance enveloped them, and they healed, bones set, wounds drew together, and pain relieved.
Wonder clung to those he aided, and they stared at him with veneration.
He waved away their thanks and moved on, never far from Sheba as they negotiated the debris to reach the most urgent cries for help.
In time, dawn crept pale and thin over the hills, light seeping through smoke and ash in narrow bands that lit up the twisted metal and scorched earth.
Sheba huddled with Toma and Linh, their faces somber as they discussed how to proceed next.
‘Idan, may we please speak?’ Sheba called out to him as he finished raising a demountable and setting it upright.
He prowled to her side, crossing his hands over his chest.
‘We’re keen to evacuate all staff and patients,’ she explained as Linh and Toma looked on. ‘The buildings are gone, we can’t stay here. We’re thinking of heading to the capital, Tansinian Prime. However, we have a problem, we have no craft we can take.’
He thought for a moment, then turned his gaze to the raider-class ship that lay half-buried in the valley floor beyond.
Its framework appeared buckled in parts, its engines choked with sand and stone, but it was still intact. Yet, its mass was too great for any mortal crew to shift.
Idan prowled to it, stepping to its undamaged tail section and setting his hands against the scarred alloy.
The air tightened around him.
Power rose from deep within his frame, bending gravity as sigils along his skin burned to life, gold light threading dark ink.
The hull groaned as, with a single breath, he hauled the vessel out of the trench. Stones and rocks cracked underneath his feet, and sand avalanched away.
The ship tore free from the earth inch by inch, metal screaming in protest as it surrendered to a will not of its own.
He dragged it clear and set it upright, the impact shuddering through the air.
Those watching, including Sheba, stared at him in awe as he strode back to the group.
‘Sante,’ Sheba murmured.
‘Not a hardship. Who among you can pilot this thing?’ Idan rasped.
Toma jerked his chin. ‘I’ve got my flight wings for commercial piloting.’
Idan nodded to him. ‘All yours then. Make sure it can fly because Ty will be back, and this time he might scorch everything in his sight.’
Toma climbed into the cockpit, coaxing life from damaged panels, rerouting power, muttering under his breath as he tried to figure out the vessel’s setup.
Sheba, Idan, Linh, and Matteo followed, climbing to the bridge, waiting as Toma cranked up systems.
After many long, anxious minutes of fiddling with the controls, the lights whirred on, and the console came to life.
‘She’s OK to get into the atmosphere,’ Toma announced with a sigh of relief. ‘But she won’t carry everyone, though. The xentium drive is almost shot, and weight limits are tight.’
The group exchanged glances, and Idan nodded.
‘Get who you can, out.’
The team moved back outside, where they prioritized the most grievously wounded to evacuate.
‘I’m local, so I’ll take the less injured to our village healer, Muna,’ Matteo offered.
Sheba jerked her head in relief. ‘Sawa, you also can supervise them.’
Nurses loaded hover beds onto the ship alongside Idan, as Sheba and the doctors pitched in to secure them until they were all crammed in snugly.
Toma revved the engines and began takeoff procedures, then cursed as the console beeped an alert.
‘We’re over the limit,’ he growled from the bridge to the packed passenger deck below. ‘We need one body off.’
Everyone glanced at each other till Sheba stepped forward.
‘I’ll stay,’ she murmured. ‘Until you can send a flight out for me.’
A small protest followed from every direction, especially Linh’s, her voice cracking with exhaustion and loss. ‘We can’t leave her alone.’
Idan turned to Sheba with a chin-jerk. ‘She won’t be alone, she’ll be with me.’
The pair locked eyes for a beat, and Sheba nodded. ‘I’ll be safe with Idan.’
‘Good, because we don’t have time to waste,’ Toma called out. ‘As Idan said, we need to get the fokk out of here.’
There was one last task, a sacred duty to perform.
In the rear deck, Sheba and Linh zipped Brad and Imani in body bags, loading them into specialized hover caskets.
Once sealed, Idan worked with Matteo to guide them into the ship’s refrigeration unit, while Linh embraced Sheba, hands trembling, their heads bowed as they paid their respects to their friends.
The women pulled apart eventually.
‘I’ll see you soon, Munene,’ Linh whispered.
Sheba’s eyes pricked with tears. ‘Of course, travel safely.’
She found Toma at the pilot’s seat, his craggy face grim and austere.
‘Sante, dear friend, for everything,’ she told him.
He hugged her, coughing to mask his emotions.
‘Please hail Ki’Remi Sable and also Selene Sable, Prime of Dunia. She’s my sister,’ she muttered. ‘Tell them what’s happened.’
Toma blinked in shock at the revelation. ‘I’d no idea you’re practically Pegasi royalty.’
‘I keep that information private for good reason. Please ask them to send a ship for me.’
‘Of course, I’ll notify them the second we get into orbit.’
‘Sante,’ she whispered.
She, Matteo, and Idan exited the rear deck as Linh and Toma strapped in on the bridge.
Sheba pressed her palm to the hull as the boarding door closed, then stepped back and stood alongside Idan’s silent, looming frame.
The engines spooled with a wounded howl, and moments later, the corvette lifted and clawed its way into the sky.
When it vanished into the clouds, Sheba turned with a weary sigh to Idan.
‘‘Where to next?’
‘Home,’ he muttered.
She took a deep inhale and nodded. ‘Sawa.’
After saying goodbye to Matteo and a group of local villagers ready to take the rest of the survivors to safety, the pair packed Sheba’s tent up.
Just as she slid the last of her things into a bag, Sheba’s knees buckled beneath her.
Idan caught her as she fell.
His hand came away wet.
The through-and-through laser burn on her shoulder was bleeding under the torn fabric tourniquet.
‘Fokk,’ he rasped. ‘I need to fix this.’
He pressed his palm to the wound and let his potency flow.
Gold light threaded through muscle and vessel, sealing ruptures, knitting flesh with exacting care.
She gasped and arched her back as scorching heat flooded her body, pain lancing then disappearing and loosening its grip.
‘What juju do you possess?’ she muttered.
‘The kind that won’t allow you to bleed out on my watch,’ he growled, his timbre rough with certainty.
When the glow from his touch faded, she settled against him.
Her eyes flicked over the scene, at the senseless desolation and destruction of what she and her colleagues had all worked so hard to build.
Her chin trembled as her gaze locked with his.
‘Please, take me away from here.’
He strapped her bags to his back, lifted her into his arms, and turned toward the mountains.
Just as the sun broke over the hills, he raced away, carrying her through smoke and ruin into the rising light.