by E L Strife
Atana saw silver pierce the chests of Oomuas’s aimids just before the aimids fell. They exposed a man akin to a Linéten but with brown hair instead of blond, and eyes which smiled instead of stabbed. He spun the dripping falchions in his hands before crisscrossing them over his back. After a wave and a tap to a shield on his chest, his pearlescent figure winked out.
Her hands weakened around Oomuas’s wrists. Atana blinked, but his shapes grew fuzzy and dim in her eyes. Her muscles slacked one at a time from the lack of oxygen. You—miscounted.
Oomuas glanced behind him and stilled.
“Such a shame,” said a sonorous voice from Atana’s right. The long, angular muzzle of a Suanoan rifle pressed to the side of Oomuas’s head.
Atana let out a strangled laugh, from relief, disbelief, and victory.
A blinding gold beacon appeared in the black. Bennett’s Ether aura writhed with strings of fire as much as it shimmered like untraveled dunes. “Guess you forgot kiatna could have more than one friend.”
The muzzle flash made Atana look away.
She awoke to a flurry of furious shouts. The floor beneath her aching limbs was cool to the touch and coated in a soft layer of black dust—a heavenly sensation in her exhausted state. Flakes still drifted down from the air. She swept a slow hand through the film, watching it pile up around her fingertips.
Atana gasped through the tightness of her throat, swallowing with force as she tried to reopen it again.
“He’s on our side!”
Bennett. She blinked hard to bring her vision back into focus.
“I do not trust them!” Nephma growled.
“Tough shit. Hurt him, and I’ll return the favor.”
She couldn’t sort the subject of the conversation until the male Linéten from Ether crouched above her, wearing a gentle smile to match the eyes on his face. There was sincerity in his expression.
“We have neutralized the Suanoan threat, Sergeant Atana.” Resting his elbows on his knees, he tilted to the side, exposing Bennett and his golden shield around the three of them. “I’m Jecarne. Sorry to hear you’ve had trouble with my species on your planet. They disappoint me more often than I care to discuss.”
Atana wanted to nod her appreciation or at least shake his hand, but she was still catching her breath. “In your debt.”
At her words, the room quieted to mild chatter. Bennett’s shield dropped.
“Seems your faith holds a lot of weight with your crews.” Jecarne’s eyes crinkled in the corners. “At least I know who to suck up to if I want something.”
A short chuckle rasped through her lips.
“Sahara?”
Jecarne moved aside, exposing the warrior lying on the floor not far from her. When Azure lifted his head, Atana saw the bruises on his skin and burnt plasma cuffs around his wrists. She couldn’t understand why he’d left his post on Agutra to fight here. His blue eyes shone with love, but all she could think of were the lives he’d left unprotected. His love made him blind to the bigger picture. And while it was a relief to see him alive, all she felt was disappointment.
To her, life was more than her little world. It always had been.
She zoned out, driving her focus inward to summon the energy to get up. Her body quivered with weakness yet felt hot and heavy as molten lead. From her position, she had an unobstructed view of the battlefield through the bridge’s wall of windows. A speck shaped like a collector picked up speed as it made a B-line for Kyra Three’s tail.
Propping an elbow under her, Atana righted herself enough to confirm what she was seeing. “Who’s heading for Kyra Three?”
“It’s Cutter,” Tanner gasped over the comms. “He stole a collector when we docked on Agutra to drop off survivors. Said something about the humming taking over.”
Atana sat up and felt Jecarne rest a tender, supportive hand to her back. She tried to place Cutter’s trajectory among the stars.
“Why were you picking any up?” Bennett demanded, off to her right. “I didn’t task your team with that.”
Tanner breathed heavily over the mic as if he’d called out mid-sprint. “We were the closest. Our slingports work.”
“Rebellious kid,” Bennett said under his breath.
“Krett is half to blame, B! And I didn’t let Cutter go! He turned into a damned machine—”
Bennett wiped a smudge of blood from his brow. “Any idea what he’s doing?”
Atana watched the vessel dip and weave between the snaking rear spires of the Kyra.
“I don’t think he cares,” Tanner muttered.
“I tried to nudge him off course, talk him sane again,” Josie said over the open channel. “But he fucking shot at me!”
Another mic clicked on, sending the transmission feed into silence. For a moment, the team stood listening, watching the battle outside.
“They’ve ravaged our forces enough,” said a calm, masculine voice.
Cutter. Atana could hear the pain right through his mask. A warm arm wrapped around her waist, helping her to her feet. Bennett’s fingers trailed gently over her spine before he left to help Azure up.
When Cutter’s ship passed effortlessly through the shield, Atana stumbled to the window in a panic. “He’s going for propulsion systems. He needs to stand down!”
“What? Why?” Bennett asked.
She pulled her hacked schematic of the Kyra up on her wristband, trying to find them a way out of the situation. “Pull everyone back!”
Bennett swayed then tapped his communicator. “All ships retreat!”
Waving to those who remained of Kyra’s doku crew, Atana switched to Xahu’ré. “Shields up! I want the closest tractorbeam hot.”
The remaining workers scrambled to fill the seats of the command center, many bleeding and blistered.
She called Cutter back. “You don’t understand the repercussions of your actions! Do not destroy the propulsion system! Pull up!”
One worker, a flumeless Primvera, raised a scrawny hand and pointed at the doors. A tractorbeam was ready nearby.
With no response from Cutter, Atana launched herself through the closest exit, calling Agutra. “Shields up! Cutter’s attempting to take out Kyra Three’s propulsion!”
“Aye, Diete!” Amianna’s soprano voice rushed through with a susurrus of shifting fabric and harsh peeps. “Uh—understood. Reorienting Agutra with the imperial’s shield to the blast side!”
“What’s the big deal?” Bennett asked, running up beside her as she sprinted for the tractor beam eight corridors away. “Mavene destroyed Kyra One, and nothing bad happened.”
“She broke it apart,” Azure clarified. “Plasma cools and solidifies in space.”
Turning into the airlock closest to the tractorbeam, Atana spun to face them. “We had a maintenance crew pick up the propulsion system of Kyra One, intact. It’s in one of the lower hangars. But if one detonates here, it will destroy Earth, Agutra, possibly Venus and Mars, throwing our galaxy into expansive chaos. It would have, as Tanner says, the domino effect.”
Chapter 54
BENNETT RECALLED EVERYONE, Cutter told himself, watching the familiar ships—ships he and Azure had worked on together—fight their way back to safety. Kyra Three lurked between Agutra and Kyra Two, still in orbit around Earth, and he intended to take it out.
Linoan fighters appeared to latch on to whichever Kyra host was in charge. And Three was the last under Suanoan rule. He dodged spires and smaller engines as he aimed for the largest burning coil deep inside.
Penetrating the Kyra shield had been easy. He’d merely slipped the modified server panel out and replaced it with one he’d snatched up out of curiosity on Home Station. The panel had sung a different, more complex song in his bones—one simultaneously sickening and captivating. It took all of fifteen seconds to make the switch.
If he’d thought his team wouldn’t have considered him crazy for the nonsensical way he was thinking, he’d have tried to contribute more to the plan
ning. But self-doubt had won the battle.
Then the serum had lost its grip.
Cutter’s fingers absorbed the vibrations of every single thing before he could make contact. It was driving him mad.
I will not be distracted.
I will not fail.
The controls of the collector peeped around him. All Cutter had to do was hover a hand above the capacitive connections. Stronger pulls indicated need, like opposite magnetic poles searching for one another.
“Like good and evil, her and I.”
A sharp thread of vibrations tore through his body from Kyra Three’s direction. Cutter swerved the collector, avoiding another spire without looking then returned to his course.
“No one can understand. I am alone with these voices, with people I don’t know.”
Out of the window, he watched five Linoan fighters converge on a single M45. Cutter felt the Agutra workers’ hearts swell with fear, their thoughts racing through his mind:
Left! Bank Left!
I can’t! We’re boxed in! We’ll crash into the Kyra shield!
Forgive me for taking Celiit’s crumbs last night. Feed him better in my absence.
There’s no time! Just tr—
Three heartbeats silenced in a single moment, taking the strength out of Cutter’s lungs again.
The war had been a torturous struggle to breathe. He’d lived thousands of deaths in a matter of hours, leaving Cutter begging for his.
If I die, I die with purpose.
Banking strong and smooth around the main engines, Cutter wished he’d tried piloting earlier in life. There was a powerful grace in the way the ship moved, one akin to the feeling he got behind the wheel of his Chevelle.
The stack of central propulsion thrusters grew before him as he selected his final approach sequence. Space blurred and rippled with heat like desert air on a midsummer’s day. The deep, wavering hum of the Kyra’s propulsion systems shook Cutter’s marrow and thudded in his chest. Red-orange light from the monstrous thrusters blared all around him. But his ears heard only the warning peeps of impending fate and the rasping of his last inhales.
His body was a tense, trembling mess. Excitement swelled in his heart. Soon, he would be at peace. Soon he would be with her.
The end was so close.
Cutter pushed the accelerators to their maximum and armed the collection ports.
With a single tap on his main screen, Cutter watched the green light arc out from his ship. Every transformer, regulator, and generator burst in a radial shower of vermillion sparks as he plunged his collecter into the cavernous heart of Kyra Three. Every thrumming stimulation merged into a lone, high-pitched ring.
This is for Arasu, for Earth, and every other planet you’ve destroyed!
The deeper he submerged, the brighter the world became around him until the dash controls were no longer visible, even when he squinted. Closing his eyes, Cutter envisioned Esmerella’s heart-shaped face and the way her wine-stained lips would smile and form the name she preferred to call him: handsome. Her memory always warmed his chest no matter how cold or alone he’d felt.
Cutter clutched the slender golden anklet to his chest. This is for you, Essie. Without you, life is meaningless.
To him, death was beautiful.
Chapter 55
BULBOUS SHIPS OF CHROME AND GLASS streaked across the sky, stealing Bennett’s attention from Kyra Three and Cutter’s advancing collector. From the aft sections of a large ship spread hundreds of mechanical tentacles. Thousands of smaller ships, like liquid diamonds in the night, popped off and raced through the fleeing collectors and M45s to confront the Linoan fighters.
“Seen them before?” Bennett whispered to Azure as they watched through the exterior airlock window. Behind them, Atana worked on the control panel, trying to figure out why the tractorbeam wasn’t repositioning.
Azure looked on with dejection, offering only the slightest acknowledgment of Bennett’s question with his eyes.
“All Resistance, the fleet is friendly. Stand down!” Krett called out over their com feed.
Atana rushed up between Bennett and Azure, scanning the glittering wave fighting back. Rapid peeps from the airlock screen made her look back and curse. “Hydraulic ram failure? Piston seized?”
Through a window in the exterior door, Bennett inspected the barrel of the tractor beam below them. It jolted as it tried to align. Groaning screeches of grinding metal confirmed the system report. With a tap of the button on the collar of his suit, his helmet unfolded and surrounded his head again. The display lit up, framed in status bars and cluttered with swarms of ship icons. “Which way do you need it to move?”
“Up.”
Easy enough. “Shields.” Bennett didn’t wait long for their blue orbs to fill the airlock. Clinging to a grab bar beside the door, Bennett punched the red release button.
The void barely tugged on his boots. A blue wall of fire behind him contained the pressurized air. Body drifting, Bennett wedged his hands between the solar panels and crawled down the filmy exterior of the ship to the cannon’s muzzle. Mounted on a central pivot, it needed only a kick in the rear.
Bennett braced himself between the panels, holding onto their supports, and slammed a heel into the butt of the cannon’s shell. Bennett felt the drum quiver. He tried again.
Bong. Bong. Bong.
The faintness of sound from his kicks was unusual. His breaths echoed inside his helmet with the strength of storm winds. It wasn’t moving fast enough.
Crawling beneath the tractorbeam’s housing, Bennett planted his feet on the hull. Turning to the stars, Bennett set his shoulders against the barrel and pushed. Every second it didn’t budge made him challenge the limits of his muscles for just a little more. Looking to Kyra Three, fearing it was already too late, Bennett saw the familiar green light of collector slingports activating.
Growling, Bennett clenched his jaw and gave one last shove. I should’ve paid more attention to Cutter’s problems. Frustration with himself for his dereliction of duty to his team made Bennett’s muscles quake with hot energy.
Without warning, the cannon broke free, sending Bennett flailing out into space. Blood-orange light struck out across the stars in a solid column. A sharp tug on Bennett’s right boot thrust a dislocating jolt through his body. Looking back, Bennett discovered red ropes had coiled out from his suit, tethering his ankle to the tractorbeam’s mounts. But his momentum sent him swinging, and he landed hard against the side of the Kyra. A solar panel cracked under his shoulder, splinters of rhizoras lazily spraying into space. Bennett grunted. Numbing tingles crept down his arm.
The panic shaken out of him, Bennett latched back on to the ship. The rope vanished.
Scrambling into the airlock, shoulder aching and muscles burned with fatigue, Bennett hoisted himself up beside Atana and Azure. They stood in their shields, looking out at Kyra Three. Atana focused on something far out in the battle.
Bennett looked to Azure for an indication of what had her in a trance.
“We’re too late.” Azure crossed his arms in an insecure self-hug. “Enough damage done to cause detonation. Five minutes left. Everyone has been told to evacuate. But Atana had the Slashgate function disabled here, on Kyra Two. We can’t leave. It takes twice a much time to reinitiate. Semilath cannot move fast enough to reach the gate. And our modified collectors can’t outrun the blastwave. Only the Primvera fleet has the capability of leaving, and most of them won’t make it in time. But they are trying.” He lifted a finger, gesturing at an opening Slashgate.
Bennett shifted up to Atana’s side. He rested a gloved hand to her back. “You did your best.”
She shook her head sharply as if she didn’t want to hear it. “When we connect through Ether, we learn things about one another. Only when Oomuas strangled me did I remember the danger of our careless methods.”
The three of them stood in the open airlock door, watching pops of white and green light flare like pop
corn inside Kyra Three’s metal casket.
“We won,” Azure mumbled, sounding disappointed.
“Only until the plasma discharges.” Atana’s tone was cold and flat as the moment Bennett had met her.
“No one will know our story,” Azure said low.
“My father will.” Bennett leaned against the wall watching the vibrant display. He wanted to kiss Atana one last time, feel her skin beneath his fingertips. Bennett lifted a gloved hand, thinking of his power and the irony of his life. “Never thought I’d die like this.”
“His ship’s breaking apart.” Atana jerked her nose at the stars.
Looking up at her words, Bennett saw the tractorbeam had snagged the fragments of a collector. When he twisted to ask why it mattered since they were all going to die, he saw her eyes squint with purpose.
Her skin encased in scintillating blue. Lifting her hands and spreading her feet, Atana sent ribbons of misty-light bursting out from her palms, reaching into space. Flames flurried to life around her as her face tensed, and her body twisted with each maneuver.
“Don’t waste your last breaths being mad at him!” Azure begged, taking Atana by the shoulders and spinning her to face him. Her manifestations dissolved though her gaze remained on Cutter’s speck in the beam. “At least look at me!”
To the left of Kyra Three’s position, Bennett saw the conflagrant line of a different Slashgate peel open across the sky. He scoured its length but saw no one enter or leave. When it winked out, he felt fear churn in the pit of his stomach. This was what the universe had warned him of. Cutter’s body hadn’t been a friendly form to converse with. Cutter was a warning of timing.
“Cutter feels as we do, Azure: alone! I can’t stop the apocalypse! I can’t save everyone! But I can save him from a heartless death, from feeling forsaken! He could die among friends!” Atana’s hands flailed at her sides. “How many times have you helplessly prayed for mercy for our brothers and sisters?” She didn’t wait for him to answer before squeezing her fists and popping her fire back to life. “I am tired of praying!”
