I took my seat in the cockpit and strapped in, closing the ramp when Rathal signaled he was ready.
“How are you going to record this?” I asked, powering up the engines and hitting the belly jets to lift us off the ground.
“I’ve tapped into your ship's external cameras, the same ones that give you the viewscreen to see with. Just take it low and slow over the battle and it will record.”
“Got it… So, how do you feel?”
Rathal’s laugh was soft and disbelieving. “Like I am in a dream. I have thought about this moment for years, ever since I left Earth.”
I rotated once I reached about three hundred feet and started forward in the direction where my HUD indicated there was the largest gathering of dots.
“Why didn’t you just visit?”
With his Transition drive it didn’t make sense why he didn’t just go back to Earth every now and again to see his family.
“We didn’t want to chance the Unity somehow following me, even with me using my own transitional gates. It just wasn’t worth the risk with the Rijitera still weak and vulnerable to the Red Plague. So, once I left, I stayed gone.”
Below us, what had to be about thirty Rijitera were jogging down a wide central road, going around or jumping over downed aircraft and still burning pieces of fallen buildings. Neldre were watching from inside some of the building's ground levels, or peeking out from blown out windows from above. Some of the more able-bodied Neldre fell into the moving pack.
I checked my HUD for Insects, but all was clear. The Fangs and Som’ae’s people must have finished the last of them off. The skies were ours.
The Unity’s red dots on my HUD were swarming about ten clicks ahead of the Rijitera before they organized themselves into orderly columns and started moving towards their own doom.
The Rijitera picked up speed, going from a light jog, faster and faster until they were sprinting.
It didn’t take long for the two groups to meet.
In the center of a four way, where a large silver statue of the Neldre Queen and her mate stood back to back with their wings spread over a circular patch of scorched flowers, the two opposing forces smashed together.
I hissed through my teeth when Hella picked up a Unity soldier and ripped him apart with no more effort than it would take me to open a bag of chips. She and her sisters had formed the first line, with Jack, Ohem, and other unknown Rijitera bringing up the following rows, and the carnage the older Rijitera in Jack’s family inflicted had me closing my eyes.
I blew a breath out of my nose, took a moment, and opened them again.
The street ran with blood. What remained of the Unity ground forces were littering the road in chunks and spatters. Hella looked up, dead center at me, with so much victorious, anticipatory malice on her blood covered face that though I knew she was really looking at the camera and not at me, my blood still ran cold and I had to use every ounce of willpower I possessed not to shoot her with everything this ship had.
“She’s fucking terrifying,” I whispered to Rathal.
“Yes. Yes, she is. But she will love you, Callie, like her own daughter. When she looks at you like that? It is like the sun warming you. She has never harmed one of her own, and despite all the misgivings I see running through your mind, Hella would never turn on us. She puts every single clan member before herself. Hella will never be a tyrant. Cold? Hard? Unforgiving? Yes. But unfair? World conquering? Never. We are safe. I promise.”
I hoped he was right, because there was no way in hell even Jack could stop her mother if she turned bad. No way. We’d have to nuke her. Just to be sure.
“Callie, you can go and get that little troublemaker now,”Jack said. I looked for her ìn the group, but they were all so bloody there was no telling them apart. I had to search for Ohem and then just guess at which Rijitera around him was Jack.
“Copy that. One psychopath, coming right up.”
thirty-seven
Callie
Ilandedinsidethehangar on the lower level of the palace and powered down the ship. Rathal helped me out of my seat and together we exited. A rag tag group of pirates were waiting for us, Som’ae included. The small fox woman smiled at me, her tall wide ears rotating to catch all the different sounds around us.
“Mission complete. Good job, all. Once we get the three stragglers here, we will follow the Rijitera to Korsal.”
Cheers erupted and I grinned at the merry band. I opened my mouth to say something when the sound of the hangar doors that led into the palace opening turned my attention.
A dirty, blood spattered Patty was standing in the doorway with an equally bedraggled Rema behind her. Aga was just to their left and the cranky croc looked like he’d been put through the wringer. Just what in the hell had happened to these three?
I strode across the room to them, eyes burning, throat clogged, and yet still managed to rib her. “Took you long enough,” Iteased, pulling her into a hug. She smelled like smoke and the burning ozone from plasma discharge. Her hair was wild and tickled my face where I laid my cheek against the top of her head.
