Chapter 29
H e was massive, silver jaw markings pulsing with cold triumph, water still dripping from his scales onto the deck in a steady rhythm.
He looked unhurried. Like he'd already won.
Klari moved instantly, stepping in front of Greta, tail lashing once in clear warning. His body was still bleeding, still running on the wrong side of exhausted, but the wall he formed between her and the rival was absolute and had no intention of moving.
The rival's eyes flicked between them, taking inventory, and a slow cruel smile spread across his face.
Klari spoke first. Voice steady and plain, no performance, no growl — just a direct offer from one male to another. "Listen. We're leaving the platform. Leaving these Games. Leaving everything. All of us."
The rival tilted his head, silver jaw markings pulsing slowly as he considered the offer. For one genuine heartbeat, something almost like hesitation flickered across his face. His golden eyes narrowed, flicking between Klari and Greta, weighing the words .
Klari kept his voice steady, calm, and plain — no challenge, no threat.
“I'll drop you anywhere you want,” he said, “another sector, another planet, another solar system. Anywhere you want. We don’t have to play their games anymore. All you have to do is stand down. Let it go.”
The rival’s gills flared once, twice. His claws flexed at his sides. For a moment the bridge was deathly quiet except for the low hum of the ship’s engines.
“Why would you do that?” he asked, voice rasping and suspicious. “Just let me walk away? After everything?”
Klari didn’t blink. “Yes. I’m done with this. We both are. Walk away. With us.”
The rival stared at him for another long second. Then his gaze slid to Greta, lingering on her with naked hunger. His markings pulsed brighter, faster.
For one fragile heartbeat, it looked like he might actually accept.
Then the hesitation vanished.
A cruel smile split his face.
“No,” he snarled. “I don’t want your mercy.”
He lunged.
Claws extended, body exploding forward with terrifying speed, aiming straight for Klari.
Klari met him head-on.
The impact was brutal, two massive bodies slamming together in the confined bridge, no water to absorb it, just metal walls and hard surfaces.
Consoles sparked and spat as their bodies slammed into them. The rival’s claws raked across Klari’s already torn chest, tearing fresh, bright-red gashes through the indigo scales .
Blood sprayed in a fine mist, catching the flickering emergency lights like dark rubies.
Greta’s stomach lurched violently at the wet, tearing sound.
But Klari was done with restraint.
He drove his knee hard into the rival's midsection, then grabbed the male's head with both hands and slammed it sideways into a metal support strut with the kind of force that ended arguments permanently.
The crack of it echoed through the cabin.
The rival roared and tried to twist free, tail whipping wildly, catching a console and sending a shower of sparks across the deck.
Klari spun, blood still dripping from his claws, just in time to see the rival lunging not for him or Greta but straight for the pilot terminal.
He was going for the controls.
"No!" Klari roared.
The rival slammed into the yoke with his full weight, two hundred pounds of blue muscle and calculation hitting the controls with targeted force.
Metal screamed. The ship lurched violently to starboard, throwing both of them across the bridge.
Greta cried as she was hurled against a bulkhead, tail slamming hard into a console.
Klari caught himself on the edge of the pilot seat, claws gouging deep grooves into the metal, holding position by sheer will.
The rival laughed — a wet, vicious sound that had nothing of humor in it — and drove his fist into the main navigation array.
Glass shattered. Circuits fried in bright blue arcs that lit the bridge in strobing flashes .
The ship's steady, reliable hum turned into a tortured wail as thrusters misfired in sequence, each failure cascading into the next.
They were falling.
Klari felt it in his bones before the instruments confirmed it — the artificial gravity fighting the sudden loss of lift, the nose dipping sharply toward the platform below.
He launched himself at the rival with everything he had left.
They collided in the narrow space between consoles like two storms meeting head-on. No room to maneuver, no water to use as terrain, no kelp forests or coral walls or geography to read and use. Just brutal, confined violence in a metal box that was already falling.
The rival's claws raked across Klari's already torn chest, reopening the deepest gashes in long, burning lines. Hot blood sprayed across the flickering screens.
Klari snarled and drove his elbow into the rival's jaw, the crack loud enough to cut through the ship's screaming alarms.
The rival staggered, but immediately countered with a savage knee to Klari's wounded thigh.
Pain exploded white-hot through his leg. His vision blurred at the edges. But he didn't fall. Couldn't fall. Greta was right there, pressed against the far bulkhead, eyes wide, hands braced against the tilting floor.
He grabbed the rival by the throat and slammed him backward into the main viewport. The reinforced glass cracked in a starburst pattern but held.
The rival's tail whipped around, trying to crush Klari's ribs with full force.
Klari twisted at the last second, taking the blow across his back instead. Scales cracked. Fresh agony lanced through him in a wave that tried to take his legs out.
"You think you can just leave?" the rival hissed, voice distorted with rage. "You think the Malquarans will just let you steal the prize and fly away? You are a fool!"
Klari's answer was to drive his claws into the rival's side and twist. Blood bubbled between them.
The ship tilted harder as another thruster failed, throwing them both against the opposite wall. Consoles sparked and died around them one by one.
The ship slammed into the artificial sun, knocking it out of place. Through the viewport, it spun crazily as the vessel began its death spiral, the perfect false sky wheeling past the cracked viewport in nauseating arcs.
Greta's voice cut through the chaos. "Klari! The starboard thrusters are gone! We're losing altitude too fast!"
He didn't have time to answer.
The rival head-butted him, forehead slamming into Klari's nose with a wet crunch that sent white light across his vision.
Blood poured down his face. For one terrifying second the world went dark at the edges, gravity pulling harder than it should, the floor uncertain under his feet. Then he felt Greta's hand on his arm — small, steady, desperate.
"Finish it," she whispered fiercely against his ear. "The ship can’t take much more. Finish him now."
That was all he needed.
With a roar that came from the deepest part of him — fear for her, love for her dressed up as fury — Klari grabbed the rival by the shoulders and heaved with everything his damaged body still had.
He shoved the male straight into the path of the ship's emergency bulkhead door as it began to cycle closed under the vessel's failing emergency protocols.
The rival's eyes went wide with sudden, animal panic as he understood what was happening.
Too late.
The heavy metal door slammed shut with crushing, mechanical indifference. The rival's silver markings flickered once, twice, then went dark forever.
Silence fell for half a second. Then the ship screamed.
Alarms blared from every remaining functional console. The last thrusters sputtered and died in quick succession, each failure a notification that there was nothing left to negotiate with.
The nose pitched downward with sudden, absolute commitment.
They were in freefall.
Klari staggered toward Greta, blood streaming freely from his face, his chest, his thigh. His markings were erratic, flickering like something that wanted to stay lit and was losing the argument.
He reached her just as the ship hit the upper atmosphere, the hull heating up around them in streaks of orange fire visible through the cracked viewport, the metal beginning to sing with the stress of re-entry at the wrong angle and speed.
"Hold on to me," he growled, pulling her tight against his chest. His tail wrapped around hers, anchoring her to him with the last reserve of his strength. "Don't let go."
The impact with the water was catastrophic.
The ship hit the sea like a meteor dropping out of a clear sky. No angle, no grace, no controlled descent. Just mass and velocity and the ocean receiving them with absolute force.
The impact threw them across the bridge .
Klari twisted at the last moment, putting his back to the bulkhead so Greta hit him instead of the wall, his body taking the collision so hers didn't have to.
Metal tore. Bulkheads buckled inward. Water exploded through breaches in the hull in roaring white torrents that hit them like walls, not water.
Consoles ripped from their mounts and tumbled through the flooding cabin. The ship folded around itself in sections, each structural failure triggering the next in a cascade that lasted only seconds and felt much longer.
Greta screamed as they were hurled against every surface — wall, ceiling, floor — the ship destroying itself around them.
Her head smacked against a terminal and everything went black.