by Ben Hale
“What are you?” Thekton growled.
“An augment,” she snarled, and released the gravity.
The weapon wrenched from Thekton’s grip and smashed into his face. His nose broke, as did several teeth and one horn, which went spinning away. The force of the blow sent him soaring across the bridge and crashing into the forward window, cracking the starship-rated glass. The Bloodwall collapsed to the deck and did not rise.
“Siena!” Reklin shouted.
Finally free, Reklin spotted a dakorian taking careful aim with his hammer lance. As Siena turned, Reklin picked up his sunderblade and hefted T-Straint on his off-hand. He took three steps to the girl, using the square plating to absorb the ion bolt meant for Siena’s back. Siena flinched and ducked behind the barrier as more ion bolts splashed around them, scoring the decking black.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Are you?” he countered. “How much graviton did you absorb?”
She grimaced. “A lot. But I needed to draw their fire so the others could get Mora and you off the bridge.”
“You look terrifying, you know that?”
She laughed, the expression at odds with her graviton-infused skin. “Good. I was going for terrifying.”
Reklin plucked a hammer lance as it skittered by. He spun it in his grip and fired twice, burning a dakorian. The bridge was in chaos. Malikin was screaming orders to shut down the power conduit, and his soldiers struggled to move inside the pulsing gravity waves. Inary was trying to carry Mora from the bridge, but the gravity was pulling her back in. Lavana was attempting to free Ero, but both were on their sides, spinning and floating at random intervals.
Skorn and Dragorn had been closest to the geyser, and their T-Straints had ripped in half. Dragorn was stuck on the back wall, and Skorn was trying to drag himself towards the exit. His arm looked broken. Most of Thekton’s dakorians were firing at Reklin and Siena, the hail of ion bolts burning into the T-Straint until it warmed against Reklin’s forearm. The krey officers were scrambling to unlock weapons lockers, but half were floating across the room before intermittently crashing into the ceiling or walls.
“What’s your plan?” Reklin asked.
“Chaos?” Siena grinned and pointed around the barrier, sending a blast of graviton that lifted a dakorian free and slammed him into a control panel.
“Mission accomplished,” he said. “What now?”
“Escape before their soldiers get out of the barracks.”
“Voice Malikin!” the communications officer shouted from next to his control panel. “Security teams have breached the doors and are on their way. They’ll be here in thirty seconds!”
Reklin grimaced. “Too late. Time to move.”
Siena caught his elbow. “One more thing: Kensen is pumping the graviton from the gravity spheres that ring this ship like a belt. We have five minutes before they implode.”
From the contact, Reklin caught an image of the gravity wells shrinking through the center of the ship like a belt tightening until it ripped its wearer in two. “You’re going to snap the Kildor in half.”
“I know.” Her expression was grim. “Whatever happens, Malikin isn’t going to make it to Lumineia.”
“Then we’d better get off this bridge. Can you warp the gravity and give us an exit?”
“I’ll try,” she said.
“And Siena?” He smiled when she rotated back. “In case I don’t get the chance to say it, thanks for coming for me.”
She shrugged. “That’s what friends are for.”
He chuckled and tilted the T-Straint panel that was now red from the ion fire. “Ready?”
She nodded. “Let’s go.”
She rotated around the barrier—and a large dakorian hand grabbed Siena from behind. Reklin caught a glimpse of Thekton, his face bloodied, his bones cracked, before Siena was yanked from view. Reklin spun to help, but a pulse of gravity caught him by the foot and dragged him away.
The massive hand closed around Siena’s arm and tugged her backwards. She cried out as she was thrown across the bridge and into a control panel. Her head and side struck the polished seracrete, sending stars through her vision. By the time she’d recovered, Thekton loomed large.
“I am a Bloodwall,” Thekton snarled, grabbing her by the leg and throwing her twenty feet to hit the forward window. “I have been victorious in thousands of battles.”
She lurched to her feet and reached for the graviton, but Thekton closed the gap in a rush and smashed a fist into her skull. Despite seeing it coming and raising her hands, the blow knocked her sprawling.
He stood over her body with all the fury of a god. “I will not be killed by a slave!”
Dazed, broken, and bloodied, Siena struggled to bring her augments to the fight. Thekton picked her up by the waist and slammed her against the glass, his other hand wrapping around her head. She pressed her hands against his arm’s bone spikes as the blood thundered through her body.
“I will tear you in half like the animal you are!” he roared.
Siena screamed as he began to pull her apart—until a tiny ball of fury struck him in the side. Through her swimming vision, she spotted Mora, all three feet of her, climbing up the towering Bloodwall and ripping at his bones with such ferocity that he stumbled backward.
“YOU NOT TOUCH MY SEENA!”
Her shriek reverberated through the chaos of bridge, guttural and feral. Mora caught Thekton’s shoulder bones and kicked him in the face, hard enough to knock a tooth loose. He snarled and released Siena to reach for Mora, but she spun around his shoulder, clawing at him so savagely that she drew bloody furrows across his flesh.
“Mora!” Inary screamed.
Mora’s mother clawed at the floor, but the pulsing gravity was spreading in devastating waves, forcing everyone in unexpected directions. Reklin was across the floor, next to Ero, and the two were clinging to the wall. Lavana and Kevent were fighting for their lives, both wounded, both overwhelmed by the security team assaulting the main doors. Half of Thekton’s team was dead, and the other half was struggling to stay clear of the expanding vortex. But as Mora dug into Thekton, she gave Siena the seconds she desperately needed.
Siena reached for spilling graviton and sucked it through her teeth, filling her flesh and bones, her sinew and blood. It brought such power it seemed to burst from her soul. It roiled inside her like a living beast that craved to be unleashed. It brought a startling clarity.
In the hurricane of energy and sound, she came to the sudden realization that her augments were not isolated, but they were interconnected. Deep inside, they were all fused to a central core, and the infusion of power spread through each and every channel.
Thekton finally caught Mora and held her up. “You’re just a runt,” he snarled.
Mora spit in his face.
Thekton growled and squeezed—and Siena struck. Fueled by gravity, the fire burned through her skin and heated her flesh. Thekton cried out and lurched back, his fingers coming away blackened.
She landed on her feet and reached to the gravity, forming a line that connected to Thekton’s throat. With all her might, she heaved. Thekton slammed into the deck, so hard that the warped seracrete cracked and parted. Mora tumbled free as Thekton rolled backwards and came to his feet. She hit him again, this time with a loose control panel. It struck him in the leg, knocking him sideways. An ion bolt came for Siena, but she hardly felt its passage. It was all just energy—and she was a conduit.
Blow by blow, she sent the powerful Bloodwall reeling. When he managed to recover, she spiked her speed and closed the gap. Her energy blade flowed from her skin and burned bright, but instead of its standard purple it was a blinding white. She slashed across his leg and hand, carving and striking, driving him back towards the gravity spout, which had grown to tear into the ceiling. That was when she saw the dakorians about to push past Lavana and Kevent. She lifted a hand, and gravity lines formed in a matching shape around Thekton’s throat.
She lifted him off the deck. He clawed at the smooth material, his eyes bulging in disbelief.
“You are no longer the supreme predator,” she growled.
With a heave of gravity and enhanced strength, she launched the Bloodwall at the charging dakorians. When his body struck, it carried the dakorians into the corridor beyond. Screams and shouts came from the passage, and Malikin took that moment to flee.
Dodging Kevent and Dragorn, he bolted for the opening—but another gravity pulse caught his foot. It lifted and pulled, drawing the shrieking krey towards the vortex. Before Siena could move, Malikin was sucked in and crushed into atoms.
The vortex pulsed again, rising and swelling, the tendrils of graviton tearing the floor and ceiling. Two more krey were sucked in, and a dakorian soldier followed. Siena registered a grip on her waist and felt Mora holding her tightly, but everyone else was clinging to walls. And the vortex was spreading, turning into a line as the power conduit failed. She reached out and warped the gravity waves, momentarily preventing them from killing her friends.
“Kensen!” Siena screamed, both mentally and audibly. “Open the emergency pods on the bridge!”
Unlocking now, he shouted back, and she caught a glimpse of him hiding behind a bulkhead as Bort and Begle sent fire burning down a corridor. I’m connecting them to the cargo bay.
Panels across the bridge swiveled open to reveal small emergency Gates. One of the bridge officers lunged to the opening, his fingers closing over the panel. It ripped free, and both went shrieking into the crushing cyclone. Another door failed to open, the panel too warped.
“Mora!” Inary screamed.
“I’ll get her out!” Siena shouted back. “Now go!”
Inary grimaced, but she gave up trying to cross the gravity line and stumbled to an exit. She grabbed Kevent and Lavana, dragging them through the portal. Dragorn and Skorn made it to another, while Ero and Reklin fought to reach the last.
Across the gap, Ero caught Siena’s gaze. “If you die, I’ll be very upset!”
Despite the struggle of keeping the energy from tearing the ship apart, and her stomach’s growing nausea, Siena couldn’t stop the laugh. “I’ll see you when we get out!”
Ero raised a hand and saluted, and then, with a laugh, fell through the Gate. With a groan, Siena released her grip. The gravity surged with a vengeance, tearing through the ship in a wall of power. Some of the krey officers and surviving dakorians managed to reach the Gates and teleport to the escape pods that were scattering from the crippled ship, but the rest were sucked in and crushed. The dakorians on the opposite side of the breach retreated, and Siena pulled Mora back from the breach.
With ships and escape pods bursting from the Kildor, Siena stumbled with Mora towards the only surviving Gate on her side. The deck under her feet shrieked as it bent and twisted, the ceiling caving in and falling just inches behind her heels. With no idea where it went, Siena pulled Mora into the escape hatch and teleported away.
Chapter Forty-Four
Ero tumbled out of the Gate into one of the hangar bays, narrowly missing being crushed when Reklin followed. The deck had three Ro fighters and a Grun-class bomber on the end, but two of the fighters had been crushed by debris from exploded power conduits in the ceiling. The third was sliding across the floor to where a wall was swelling like a bubble.
Ero darted for the bomber. “Well, that was terrifying,” he said.
“You mean Siena?” Reklin limped at his side. “Or the bridge being sucked into an implosion?”
“Siena.” He said it like it was obvious.
“When did she get so much power?” Reklin checked his charged sunderblade but kept it in hand.
“She’s been getting better at channeling energy with her augments,” Ero said, “but that was a whole other level.”
The bubble on the wall exploded, and purple light blossomed to engulf the third fighter. It lifted free of the floor and folded in half, then flattened against the wall. The seracrete girders that ran the length of the ship bent like they were made of fabric. Ero laughed as the ship was crushed.
“You find this amusing?” Reklin asked.
“Terrifying,” Ero said, “and exhilarating.”
The door opened, and both swiveled to face the threat. Two of Malikin’s krey officers and a dakorian rushed into the hangar bay. Reklin closed the gap in a rush and struck the surprised dakorian. Ero activated his subdermal energy blade and carved through the two krey, leaving them dead on the floor. Another explosion made the hangar bay tremble.
Ero swung again as the door opened, only to halt his blade at Kensen’s neck. The boy stared at him, his chest heaving, his eyes wide. Ero grinned and lowered the weapon as Reklin dropped the dakorian.
“You made it,” Ero said.
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Tana said, swerving around him. There was blood down her arm, and an ion burn over her shoulder. Quis, Begle, and Bort were with her, as were Worg and Alina.
“Captain!” Worg brightened, despite the deep cut down his chest. “You’re alive.”
“Barely,” Reklin said. “Where’s Teridon?”
Alina grimaced and shook her head. Reklin’s face fell. “He deserved better.”
The Kildor trembled, and a large crack appeared in the seracrete above the door. “Be sad later,” Ero said. “Let’s go.”
He hurried to the Grun bomber. Once Kensen hacked the codes and dropped the lower ramp, Ero sprinted up the ramp and threaded down the corridor to the bridge. Unlike its smaller Gor-class cousins, the Grun bombers had compartments to either side that could be used as a transport, or to drop nova bombs from space. Ero entered the small cockpit and slid into the pilot’s seat. Kensen followed, and Reklin leaned against the door.
“Where’s Siena?” Kensen asked as he accessed the ship’s cortex and spun up the gravity drive.
“Last I saw she was on the bridge,” Ero said. “She was on the other side of the rent.”
An explosion rocked the bomber, lifting it off its landing gear and sliding them six feet to the side. Ero clenched the control panel, his heart rising up in his throat. Ero’s other hand fumbled for the bomber’s gravity repulsors, and they floated off the deck. The outer shield shimmered.
“What’s happening?” Ero asked.
Kensen flicked a finger and brought up a holo above the navigation control panel. It showed the schematics of the ship, with the six internal gravity drives located in a ring around the center. They were all blinking furiously.
“Siena cracked the housing of the alpha conduits, and graviton is ripping them apart,” Kensen said. “We’ve got three minutes until all six implode at once.”
Ero knew what would happen. The six balls of reinforced seracrete would constrict as the gravity tightened, the alpha conduits between them sucking them around the Kildor’s midship. When they detonated, the ship would be gutted.
“Why didn’t emergency shields stop the breach from spreading?” Reklin asked.
“I deactivated them.” Kensen grimaced. “Siena insisted that no matter what happened, we were going to destroy the ship.”
“Good girl,” Ero said.
“What if she doesn’t make it outside?” Kensen asked.
“It’s Siena,” Ero said.
“Where are the others?” Tana called from the bomber bay.
“They should be going for escape pods now,” Kensen called back. He tapped a holo and escape points brightened. “Looks like most of our teams found their way to ships or pods.”
“Set tracking beacons,” Ero said, “and tag the friendlies.”
The ship trembled and listed to the side, grinding the landing gear across the hangar deck. Ero pulsed the engines and lifted them further off the floor as the deck plating rippled like water, its seracrete warping from the gravitational stress. The Grun’s shields warbled as it was assaulted by the waves of energy.
“Do you have the codes to the hangar doors yet?” Ero demanded.
“Working on it,” Kensen said, his hands flying across the control panel.
The doors began to open outward, a shield taking their place. As the mechanism shrieked, Ero swiveled the bomber and fired the twin lances, sending ion bolts into the machinery. The door ripped free and tumbled into space, revealing streaking stars.
“Are we still at hyperlight?” Ero asked.
“For now,” Kensen said. “But the hyperlight bubble is destabilizing. I don’t know what that means.”
“It means if we don’t find a place to cushion the deceleration, we’ll be dead,” Ero said.
Ero calculated the odds and didn’t like the result. While at hyperlight, a starship generated a shield that protected it from particles of dust or random rocks. Minor impacts were absorbed, and the kinetic energy fueled the drive. The onboard cortex avoided larger impacts in its course, making micro-adjustments to keep the ship from hitting an asteroid or a planetoid. But if the Kildor lost power because the gravity drives imploded, the hyperlight shield would destabilize and it would go through an emergency deceleration. Escape pods were equipped with an onboard emergency decelerator, but the bomber wasn’t. They would have to ride the Kildor back to normal space.
“This is going to get bumpy,” Ero said.
He flew them out of the shield—and the ship immediately began to shake violently. Ero clung to the controls and kept them inside the hyperlight shield, keeping them as close to the hull as he dared. He followed the contours of the ship away from the worst of the gravity distortions, which took him towards the starship’s bow. Then he flipped them onto their belly and activated a magnetic clamp. The bomber immediately sucked them against the nose of the Kildor. The shaking slowed so his teeth weren’t rattling out of his jawbone, but the gravimetric pull increased.
“What are you doing?” Kensen asked. “Shouldn’t we be getting out of here?”
“It’s our only chance,” Ero said. “When the gravity drives fail, it’s going to turn the Kildor’s midship into a lump of atoms. Without power, the bow and the stern are going to enter rapid deceleration at different times. We won’t survive on our own, but if we stick to the nose of the Kildor, we’ll have some protection until its emergency shields expire.”
