Through the bond, I feel her—steady and fierce and so impossibly alive that I want to weep.
Polly?Disbelief. Hope. Terror for her safety, so sharp it cuts deeper than the plasma burn.
Told you I was coming.Cool as starlight.What do you need?
What do I need? I need her safe. I need her far from here. I need to not watch her die in this smoke-choked pit while I’m too weak to protect her.
But before I can form any of that into words, she moves.
Two shots. Two elites drop.
“Rynn, three on your six!” Her voice rings out, clear and commanding. “Henrok—mech suit, left side!”
I spin without thinking, trusting her count, and put my last two shots into the soldiers flanking our position. They fall.
Pride wars with terror in my chest. She’s magnificent—every inch the warrior I never wanted her to be, because warriors die, warriors bleed, warriors break in exactly the kind of hell we’re standing in.
Stop,she sends through the bond, feeling my spiral.Stop arguing and shoot something.
I grab a fallen rifle. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“And yet.” She takes position on damaged machinery, elevated, perfect sightlines. Fires three times in quick succession. Three more enemies down. “Funny how that works.”
“Courier West!” Henrok’s voice holds something I’ve never heard from him before—relief. “Nice of you to join us!”
“Wouldn’t miss it. What’s the play?”
“Charges on Generator Two. I cannot reach them. Too much fire.”
Polly’s eyes sweep the battlefield. I can feel her calculating through the bond—distances, timing, the cycling rhythm of the mech’s weapons. “How long on the timer?”
“Three minutes. Maybe less.”
“Then let’s move.”
She starts calling targets, and I realize with something between awe and terror that she’s not just fighting—she’sconducting. Using the bond to coordinate with me, using her pilot’s instincts to read the flow of battle, using that brilliant, chaotic brain to find patterns in the carnage.
We’re still outnumbered. Still outgunned.
But for the first time since they hit the generators, I think we might survive.
The mech pins us down for eight brutal seconds, its suppression fire chewing through our cover.
“That thing’s shields are rotating,” Polly calls out. “Three-second gap on the rear panel every twelve seconds.”
I’m moving before she finishes speaking, seeking an angle. “I cannot get line of sight from here.”
“I can. Keep it looking at you.”
My scales are already flickering, glow surging without conscious command. I don’t have time to question the instinct—I just let it happen. Let myself blaze like a signal fire, strobing patterns designed to overwhelm optical sensors.
The mech turns toward me. Its guns spin up.
I dive.
Three shots crack from Polly’s position. The mech shudders, staggers, crashes to the deck in a shriek of torn metal.
“Clear!” she shouts. “Henrok, move!”
