The members of Kaedren's team that were still alive straggled aboard the shuttle. I counted three missing. Three who wouldn't be coming back. Kaedren bracketed the retreat, all four of his hands holding blasters, picking off corporate soldiers as he backtracked to the ramp.
"Kaedren, get on the shuttle, now!" I said, standing at the entrance with my hand on the shuttle door button.
He turned and sprinted up the ramp. I looked up, and my eyes went wide. A corporate guard had made it within twenty feet of the shuttle and was pulling something off his belt. He cocked his arm back and threw it. It bounced up the ramp and landed at my feet. My brain refused to name what I was looking at.
"Get away!" Kaedren yelled as he dropped the guns and used all four arms to shove me into the shuttle's storage bay.
My breath was knocked out of me as I flew backwards, bouncing on the ground, finally slamming into Lyrin. I looked up, confused and dizzy. Kaedren had thrown himself on top of the device and curled intothe fetal position. I blinked. Everything felt like it was moving in slow motion. I reached a hand up and opened my mouth to yell for Kaedren to move.
Kaedren's body jumped as a small whoomph filled my ears. Lyrin scrambled to his feet and slammed his hand against the button that controlled the ramp. It slid shut. He dropped to his knees and turned Kaedren over. A wave of unregulated pain slammed into me through the Tether, and I vomited in my helmet. My chest was on fire, and I couldn't move. A moment later, the pain disappeared, and I felt my connection to Kaedren lessen, as if it had been muted.
I pulled my helmet off, wiped my mouth, and sprinted to Kaedren's body. Lyrin had already applied three of his medpacks. My breath caught as I looked at the damage the grenade had caused. Kaedren's eyes had rolled back into his head, and purple blood covered his chest. I could see the bones of the lower arms through shredded skin and muscle. I froze.
"Kira, I need your medpacks," Lyrin said.
I blinked, then nodded as I dropped to my knees. I pulled two medpacks from my belt and gently pressed them against the injuries that hadn't been covered yet. I grabbed a portable vitals monitor from a pocket and placed it above Kaedren's heart. His pulse was weak, and he was losing blood.
"Torvyn, we need to get back to the Starbreaker, now!" I said.
"Working on it."
"Shuttle crews, be advised. There are four corporate frigates on an intercept course with the Starbreaker. There is one additional frigate that has placed itself between your egress path and our ship."
"We don't have time for a fight, Kaedren is dying!" I said.
"I am aware," Torvyn replied. "But getting past a corporate frigate is not an easy task. They have a lot of firepower, and we do not."
I paused. Power. Something tickled the back of my mind. Something about power.
"Think, god damnit," I muttered.
A power source. Too much power. An overload.
"Vaelix, the artifact we took from Voss," I said. "The one generating power for the colonies. Could we weaponize it somehow? Overload their systems?"
A pause. I heard rapid keystrokes through the comm.
"An ion beam," Vaelix said, his voice sharpening with interest. "If I route the artifact through the central weapons processor and reverse the polarity of the energy array, their frigates don't have ionic shielding. It would disable their power systems completely."
"How long?"
"Thirty seconds," he said. "I'm already on it."
"Torvyn, you need to keep the shuttles in the atmosphere until Vaelix gives you the all clear," I said.
"What is happening?" he asked.
"Vaelix is creating an ionic charge that will disable the frigates' power systems. They don't have the right kind of shielding, so they'll turn into sitting ducks. That will allow us to get to the Starbreaker unimpeded."
"Brilliant," he said. "Standing by for your confirmation, Vaelix."
The shuttle broke through the planet's final cloud layer. I looked through the front viewport and gasped. Above us, just outside the planet's atmosphere, a massive corporate frigate was waiting.
"Incoming transmission," Torvyn said.
"Hello again, Doctor Vale," a voice said.
Voss. He was here. He must have planned this whole thing.
