Chapter 11
AMY
This was supposed to be routine.
Just a godsdamned patrol. Same dusty canyon. Rust-pitted ridges and wind like a blade across your face. I was already drafting the headline in my head—“Another Day in the Alliance’s Backyard.” Snappy. Hollow. Safe.
Then the world exploded.
The first shot whines past my ear so close it feels like a kiss from death. The second tears a hole in the air where Sira had been walking, and she’s gone—just gone, like the wind swallowed her whole.
“AMBUSH!” someone shouts. Probably Varr.
I hit the ground hard enough to taste metal in my mouth.
My recorder flies from my hands and clatters into the dust like a dying beetle, its lens cracked and blinking at me like an injured eye.
The canyon becomes a cacophony—screams, energy discharges, rocks raining from above.
The ground kicks beneath me, a dirty tantrum of shockwaves and shrapnel.
Something slams into my back—body, maybe debris—I don’t know. I’m rolled in dirt and adrenaline, vision strobing with flashes of blue fire and red mist.
Move, Amy. Get up. Get the hell up.
My limbs feel like they belong to someone else. Someone softer. Someone stupider. I crawl, scraping hands and knees on shattered stone, gravel biting deep into the skin through my synth-weave jacket.
“Matthews!” a voice roars. Not my name—my whole spine.
Darun.
I turn my head and there he is—cutting through the smoke like a god of war, his bulk swallowing light, plasma rifle barking death. His mouth moves—orders I can’t hear over the blood thudding in my ears—but I see the panic in his eyes. Not for himself. For me.
Then the ridge behind me groans.
That’s the only word for it. Like some ancient beast buried in the earth is shifting in its sleep.
Darun shouts something, and I see it—the crack above, in the red rock wall. The kind of fracture that says this is where the canyon dies.
A cascade of stones tumbles down in slow, horrific poetry.
“MOVE!” Darun bellows, sprinting through the haze toward me.
I try. Oh, I try. My boot catches on the half-buried arm of someone already down, and I go face-first into the dirt. The blast of a collapsing ridge chokes the sun behind a mushroom of ash.
Darun hits me like a freight hauler, one arm hooking around my waist, the other shielding my head. I can smell him—blood, smoke, that strange metallic heat that always clings to his skin like a second armor.
We tumble together, land hard, slide down an embankment of scree and shattered equipment.
Everything is noise. Thunder. Screaming. Then boom—a blast wave chases us like an angry god.
Darun grabs my hand and yanks me into the belly of a downed transport half-buried in the cliff wall. It reeks in here—old oil, scorched wiring, and the unmistakable tang of burned flesh.
We collapse inside just as a lance of plasma scorches past the open hatch, lighting the canyon in green-white flame. The entire world shakes. Dust rains from the ceiling. My ears ring like they’re full of bees.
He shoves the hatch shut. It doesn’t seal. Doesn’t matter.
It’s the only shelter left.
I cough, hard. My lungs rebel against the smoke, my throat raw and screaming. “That—was not—routine.”
Darun’s chest heaves. He’s crouched by the viewport, golden eyes narrowed. His rifle is already hot, smoke curling from the barrel. His hands are steady now—but I saw them shake when he pulled me in.
He doesn’t answer.
Static crackles from the unit clipped to his pauldron. He taps it. Again. Static. He growls low, like a cornered animal.
“Command, this is Bravo-Actual,” he snarls into the mic. “We are cut off. Coordinates Sierra-Red-Four. Multiple casualties. Request immediate evac and suppressive fire.”
Nothing.
Just the hiss of a dying signal.
He slams a fist against the console, denting it with a sharp clang. “Fuck!”
My hands are still shaking. I dig into my jacket, fish out a backup holopad. Miraculously intact, but signal’s dead. Of course it is. The canyon walls are too thick, and the ridge collapse probably crushed half the comm grid.
We’re alone.
I try to laugh. It comes out cracked and bitter. “So. That went well.”
Darun shoots me a look. “You think this is funny?”
“No,” I say. “But if I don’t joke, I’ll scream.”
He exhales sharp through his nose. Paces. Turns.
“We’ll get back to them,” I say.
He glances at me like I’ve lost my mind. “They’re either retreating or dead.”
“Then we’ll catch up. Or follow the smoke trail.”
“That’s optimism,” he mutters.
“No,” I say, pushing myself up, knees trembling. “That’s survival. And I’m not dying in a scrap heap, Darun. I’ve got way too many people to piss off first.”
Something flickers across his face. Annoyance, maybe. Admiration? Regret?
He leans near the hatch again, peering through a narrow crack where sunlight slants in with the dust. The firestorm has moved on. Plasma trails burn high above, the telltale sign of Ataxian fighters banking out of the canyon.
“Stay close, human,” he growls, voice thick. “This is no place for mercy.”
His words are sharp, clipped. But his hands—those goddamn hands—are trembling again. Just slightly. Barely there. But I see it.
Not fear.
Restraint.
He’s holding something back.
I don’t know what. I don’t think he does either.
“You alright?” I ask, quieter.
He doesn’t answer. Just keeps watching the canyon like he expects it to swallow us both next.
I move closer. Not because I’m scared—though maybe I should be. I move because I need to be near something solid. And right now, for all his rage and contradictions and buried pain, Darun’s the most solid thing in this canyon of ghosts.
His hand twitches near his weapon.
I rest my fingers on his forearm. “Hey.”
He blinks like I just pulled him from somewhere far away.
“Thanks,” I say. “For pulling me out.”
He grunts. “Didn’t have time to dig a new reporter out of the supply crate.”
“Liar,” I say, soft and steady.
His eyes flare. He opens his mouth. Closes it. Looks away.
I think that’s the first time I’ve won.
Outside, the canyon breathes smoke. The sky above it swirls with ash and fire, and the wind carries the faint, charred stench of dead things.
Inside, it’s just us.
Two survivors in a war that stopped making sense long before today.
And I realize something, sitting in the dark next to this seven-foot-tall war machine with blood under his claws and a soul he swears he doesn’t have is that he’s scared.
Not of death.
But of whatever’s cracking inside him.
And maybe that means we’re not lost yet.
That means we still have a way forward.
If we don’t kill each other first.