As long as they haven’t replenished their missiles.The hybrid rebels were fairly certain they’d run out of ammunition only two days before. They’d performed an orbital strike on theZitha’ssister ship, theFlynt, as it had been returning from a mission to extract the hybrids still left behind at the Aurillon lodge on the far end of the mountain range. He’d lost two brothers that day.
The laser was less agile than the missiles, and it could only fire for so long before it had to stop or risk burning out the ship’s energy reserves.
There was nothing they could do to retaliate. The hybrids had spent the small reserve of ground-to-air missiles they’d had to distract the Aurillon while the females entered atmosphere—not that they would have done any good. They were meant for a smaller class of ships at a far shorter distance.
TheZitha’sthrusters engaged, and she was rocketing toward the base at three times the speed any of the hovercraft could achieve. Lidan had to have passengers; he wasn’t stopping to try to recover the other transports, which meant he had his own load that he’d deemed too valuable to risk in the venture.
The intercom system blared twice, warning that the blast door below them was about to open. TheZithaslowed to a crawl as she approached, disappearing from their line of sight as Lidan guided her back into the hangar.
Cordelia dropped his arm, bolting toward the hall.
CHAPTER 8
Cordelia randown the halls in a mirror of the path Rentir had taken to bring her up to the break room.
“Cordelia!” he called after her. He spat something that sounded like a curse when she didn’t slow down.
Her hair whipped in her face as she skidded around a turn, frantically retracing her steps. Just as she reached the door they’d entered through, it opened with a metallic groan.
Three familiar faces stood just on the other side. A battered Pandora Jones—Lapillus’s would-be future physician—a black-eyed Nyx, and a relatively unscathed Lyra Albrecht. The latter eyed her up and down, arms crossed over her chest.
“Commander Normandy.” Lyra tossed her hair, whipping her long, blond braid over her sun-burned shoulder. She smoothed the rumpled fabric of her tank top, as if it were one of her tailored dresses, obscuring the pale strip of midriff that had been exposed.
“Miss Albrecht,” Cordelia said, nodding.
Pandora leaned heavily on Nyx, who already looked like she was barely keeping upright. There were purple twigs snagged in Pandora’s coiled curls, and a deep cut marred her glossy, dark skin just below her left eye.
Cordelia stepped up on Pandora’s other side, ducking under her arm so she could take the doctor’s weight. “We need to get you to medical. What the hell happened?”
Pandora limped along between them, blinking dazedly. “I don’t know,” she said in her characteristically soft tone. “It’s all a blur, at least until Nyx retrieved me from my pod.”
“She rolled down a fucking cliff,” Nyx said hoarsely.
“And you?” Cordelia asked.
“Slid down a fucking cliff to get to her.” Her prosthetic was deeply gouged and scratched, the glossy black finish worn off to the metal below. “Didn’t quite stick the landing.” She pointed to her dual black eyes.
“Cordelia,” Rentir called, finally catching up to her.
She kept walking toward him, but the other three stopped dead, causing her to pull awkwardly on Pandora’s arm. Pandora grunted in pain, her dark eyes glued to the towering purple man approaching them.
“Another one,” Lyra muttered, her eyes narrowing on Rentir.
“Rentir,” a deep, masculine voice rang out behind them.
Cordelia looked over her shoulder, amazed to find another equally bizarre alien approaching them. The pilot, surely.
He was a little taller than Rentir, and covered head to toe in shimmering green scales. His nose was different than the others—still relatively flat, but narrower, with a triangular tip and slitted nostrils. He had no horns, but he shared the strange, whip-like tail that Rentir had. He also had four arms, like one of the other aliens she’d met in the hangar when they’d arrived. It was a struggle not to gape at all those limbs. She looked at his face instead, at the stark yellow of his eyes, slitted with the same vertical pupil Rentir had.
“Lidan,” Rentir called back in greeting.
Lidan stepped around them, reaching out to clasp one of Rentir’s wrists in all four hands. Rentir returned the gesture, andthey broke apart as Lidan clapped one hand on Rentir’s back. They turned to eye the human women, murmuring low to one another. Cordelia could only make out a word here and there—females, pods, wreckage.
“Can you have this conversation somewhere else?” Cordelia snapped. “My crew needs medical attention.”
Rentir winced, but Lidan only looked at her like she was a bug that had done something interesting.
“Move,” she said in a commanding tone.
