7. Lorken
Lorken
My teeth rattled as I pounded across the stage with Athena in my arms, leaping into the air at the edge and landing in deep squat.
“Are you insane?” she screamed, as I straightened and gave chase to the rest of my raiders tearing through the theatre that was collapsing around us.
I did not answer. She was not the first to accuse me of insanity, although I had never been accused of being a mad man by someone I was saving. It was typically those I was obliterating who were certain of my madness.
The blasts from outside were relentless now, and I fought to stay upright as the ground trembled and fragments of the ceiling cascaded from overhead. This was the work of the Zagrath. Only they would risk killing so many of their own soldiers to kill us.
If they were bombarding the city, that meant that at least one of their fleet had gotten past my horde. And that meant that the Zagrath had sent a lot of ships. I clenched my teeth and caught up with the other Vandar and theater members.
One of my raiders had picked up the tiny female with lavender hair and was running with her tucked under one arm.
The man with orange hair pumped his arms as he ran, his face almost the same shade as his pointy hair.
Two tall lanky men had no problem keeping pace with my raiders, but it took two Vandar to keep the female with a cone of blue hair moving.
Each had her by one arm as they propelled her forward, her feet circling beneath her like she was trying to pedal the air.
We emerged through the broken front door and were met with a courtyard that was pockmarked with holes blasted into the stone. Smoke made the air hazy, and I swallowed the acrid taste of char.
“You can put me down, you know.” Athena smacked my chest. “I’m fully capable of walking.”
“We do not need to walk,” I told her after taking a sip of breath. “We need to run and avoid Imperial fire.”
“Then I can run.”
“Not as fast as I can.”
“Cocky prick,” she muttered, which provoked an unwanted smile from me. I preferred a female who was a challenge.
Shouts from one of the adjoining alleys propelled us forward, and the Vandar who’d run into the theatre to tell us of the attack led the way down one dim alley that smelled more like mildew than smoke.
A few Imperial soldiers lay slumped on the ground, gashes marring their necks or slashing their uniforms and blood pooling around their motionless bodies.
Athena’s grip around my shoulder tightened, and she stopped demanding to be let down. Maybe she realized I was her best bet for getting through Kashara unscathed or maybe she hated the thought of stepping over so many dead bodies.
At the end of the alley, we made a hard right into another passageway, but this one was not so dank. At the end, a uniformed Imperial guard stepped into our path. His eyes widened for a beat, but before the first raider reached him, he’d turned and ran away.
“That’s right,” the blue-haired female yelled. “You better run. We’re crazy, and so are the Vandar!”
We wound through more streets, each one getting wider and lighter, until we spilled into the main courtyard that had been filled with market stalls.
The stalls were empty and trampled, with fabric awnings in tatters.
More dead soldiers sprawled across the steps on a government building, but I allowed myself a breath of relief that no Vandar raiders joined them.
The only raiders in sight were the ones rushing from the double doors of the building with a tall, slender human in dirty, torn clothes and another smaller one by his side.
“Vern!” The woman with towering hair broke free from the Vandar carrying her and rushed to the lanky man who practically stumbled down the stone steps.
The man swiped the back of his hand across his eyes. “Lettie? Is that you?”
The buxom woman was a little more than half his height. She threw her arms around his waist. “The Vandar said they were rescuing you from prison, but I didn’t think I’d see you again.”
The man she called Vern cocked his head at her. “Why? You going somewhere?”
Lettie bobbed her head up and down. “We’re escaping with the Vandar. Come with us.”
Vern glanced at the troupe members surrounded by raiders and me holding Athena. “You sure you’re not being abducted?”
“They are not,” I said, impatient with the delay. “If you come with us now, I can offer you sanctuary aboard my warbird.”
The man’s eyes popped wide. “A warbird.” His tone was reverent. “I’ve only heard about them. I never thought I’d get to see one.” Then he glanced at the smaller man who’d been running alongside him. “What about my friend Dell? He was in jail too.”
I ground my teeth but jerked my head for him to join us. “Fine. If he’s a resistor, he can come. But only if he can keep up.” Now, there was truly no more time to waste. Not with the planet under attack. I glanced toward the city gates and grunted to my raiders. “Vaes!”
The two raiders hoisted Lettie up by the arms and resumed running while she called over her shoulder. “Keep up, Vern!”
The raiders who’d been escorting Vern from the prison took him by the arms and hustled him along behind his sister with Dell puffing to keep up. Our group made its way through the rest of the city as blasts sounded behind us.
“They’re hitting the shipyard,” Vern said, glancing over his shoulder to where black columns of smoke billowed skyward.
For a moment I wondered why they would destroy their own ships. Then it hit me. If they didn’t care if their own soldiers lived or died, they were ensuring that none of the residents of Kashara had a means of escape.
As if realizing the same thing, Athena’s expression darkened. “The bastards.”
“I could not agree more,” I said, as we ran through the city gates where dusty stone gave way to dirt that kicked up clouds behind our feet.
After clearing the city and running for a bit longer, I swung my head from side to side. The transport ship should have been visible. I should have been able to see it by then.
I slowed to a halt and dragged in a breath as the rest of the group also stopped. The only thing that kept me from panicking was the lack of a burned-out hull or smoke from a blasted vessel. Our ship hadn’t been attacked, but where was it?
Then a deafening roar rent the air. My heart stuttered in my chest as I tipped my head back, expecting to see a Zagrath battleship bearing down on us. But the ship that burst through the murky cloud cover wasn’t an Imperial one. It was Vandar.
Athena sucked in a breath. “Is that your warbird?”
Before I could answer, fighter jets poured from the sides and swarmed the city, returning Imperial fire and filling the skies. Then a transport dropped down, barely hitting the dusty ground before the ramp was down.
We didn’t wait, thundering toward it as the exhaust bathed us in a dust cloud.
Then we were racing up the ramp and onto the transport moments before it lifted off again.
The ramp didn’t even close before the transport darted inside the belly of the warbird, fighter jets swooping back inside beside us and making combat landings as the warbird shuddered and powered through the clouds and into the planet’s atmosphere.
The raiders on the transport with me exchanged startled looks as we hurried off the ship and onto the hangar bay of the warbird where I finally put Athena down.
My majak ran off his own transport, shaking his head. “What was that?”
“That was me saving your asses.”
I swiveled to see my battle chief rocking back on his heels and giving us a wicked grin. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hug my younger brother or challenge him to a duel.