“They’re saying if we work together, if we reach the central nexus—” I shouted the translation over the din.
“No working with sky-stealers!” Dorek roared. “No mercy for those who destroyed our world!”
A Kythran grabbed a piece of broken equipment and swung it at a D’tran in self-defense. It was a weak blow, barely connecting, but it was enough to send the D’tran into afury. He raised his energy weapon, the charge building with a high-pitched whine that I felt in my teeth.
“Don’t!” I started toward them, but someone’s elbow caught me in the ribs, driving the air from my lungs.
I stumbled backward and felt something crunch under my boot. My scanner. The modified atmospheric scanner I’d altered to get us here was in pieces.
“No, no, no.” I dropped to my knees, trying to gather the fragments, but a D’tran warrior stepped on it, grinding the delicate circuits into powder. “Stop! You’re destroying—”
Nobody was listening. The violence was spreading, intensifying. A Kythran was bleeding from a head wound. Another was trying to shield the eldest of their group, who’d collapsed against the wall. The water condenser sparked and died as a D’tran’s weapon discharge went wide.
Through it all, I could hear the Kythrans pleading. My translator kept feeding me their words, a desperate litany that made my chest ache.
“We never wanted this.”
“Our ancestors were wrong.”
“Help us make it right.”
“Please, we’re trying to help.”
But no one could hear them except me. And I was just one human scientist in a cave full of warriors who’d been waiting generations for this moment of revenge.
I saw Torven trying to reach Vikkat, trying to get him to restore order, but Vikkat himself looked torn between rational thought and the same rage that had consumed his warriors. His eyes remained as red as the rest, his face flushed with generations of suffering demanding payment.
A Kythran scrambled past me, clutching something to his chest. Data cubes. He was trying to save the data cubes. A D’tran caught him by the arm and wrenched the cubes away, hurling them against the wall, where they shattered.
“Those could have had answers!” I screamed, but my voice was nothing against the roar of violence.
Then I saw Dorek turn toward me.
His eyes were wild, his weapon still charged and raised. For a moment, I didn’t understand what was happening. Then I saw the fury in his expression, the way he was looking at me like I was just another enemy.
“Star-cousin corruption,” he snarled. “You brought bad fortune. You and your strange mate.”
The weapon discharged.
Time just slowed down. I saw the energy bolt coming, saw the air shimmer with deadly heat, saw my death approaching with the clinical detachment of someone who’d already accepted it.
Then Torven was there.
He slammed into me from the side, his body a shield between me and the blast. The impact threw us both to the ground, and I heard him grunt in pain as the energy seared across his back and shoulder.
“No!” The word tore from my throat as I scrambled to push him off me, to see the damage. His shirt was burned through, the skin beneath blackened and smoking. The smell of scorched flesh made my stomach heave. “No, no, no—Torven!”
His face was gray beneath the shifting colors of his skin, his breathing labored. “I’m okay,” he managed. “I’m—”
But he wasn’t okay. I could see that. The blast had weakened him, stealing the strength he needed to protect us. Blood seeped through the burned fabric of his shirt.
Something inside me snapped.
I surged to my feet, throwing my arms wide, and screamed with everything I had. “STOP!”
The violence didn’t stop immediately. But my voice—raw and desperate and furious—cut through enough of the chaos that some of the D’tran paused.
“STOP THIS!” I screamed again. Tears were streaming down my face, hot and angry. “Look at what you’re doing! Look at yourselves!”
