She pressed her back against the twisted alloy, chest heaving, lungs burning, panic clawing up her spine.
Was this how her life ended? Without dignity, caught up in a vengeful monster’s revenge? A senseless deletion in the wakeof a man’s pride, an annihilation that left no room for honor or survival?
She thought of the patients still trapped in the wards.
Of the nurses she worked with.
Of the promise she made to herself when she came here, brokenhearted but determined to do good.
She squeezed her eyes shut from the heat and noise, certain that there would be no rescue this time.
No one was coming.
With an inhale, she swung her weapon up above the edge of her pinion and began firing at will into the raider’s hull. Allowing her fury, blind rage, and wild grief to empower her.
The whoomph of the first rail gun strike tore the night open beyond the Lattaya Hills, and Idan parsed it from halfway up the mountain.
It surged over him, a convulsion in the world’s spine, a violent wrench that scraped through his chest and into the core of his bones.
The land below him recoiled. Birds burst from the canopy in panicked spirals, and his sheep skittered in their pens.
‘What thefokkwas that?’ Lago asked, from inside the barn door, where he sat on a bale of hay, still in shock from the unexpected blitz on the farm.
Idan halted at the shed door, one hand still wrapped around a length of wire he intended to use to repair a perimeter fence that fell victim to the raider’s attack.
Lifting his chin, he let his Sacran perception make sense of the chaos.
Ty Si’Rhix’s intent rode the violence with obscene clarity, swollen with triumph, thick with the belief that Idan’s absence from the medical center bought him freedom from consequence.
He closed his eyes as he precogged the offensive, the cadence of the guns, the careless sweep of destruction, the arrogance of taking innocent lives.
‘Youfokkin’ stupid, greedy bastard,’ he growled.
Dropping his fence wire, he turned to Lago. ‘The hospital is under attack, and they need me.’
Ignoring Lago’s shocked reaction, Idan unleashed his potency and folded distance until it ceased to exist.
He arrived above the clinic in a glimmer of gilded lightning, the sky splitting with a concussive crack that sent dust and debris spiraling.
Gold-white energy flared around him, scorching the air, bending light. Below, the field infirmary burned.
Canvas and demountable walls hung in tatters.
Steel frames lay twisted and half-melted.
Screams cut through smoke and fire as two raider-class ships banked over the scene, their rail guns chewing methodically through what little still stood.
Idan sped up, launching into the atmosphere, over scorched earth as the ground collapsed beneath the force of his ascent.
He slammed into the first skiff head-on, hands locking into its hull with crushing certainty.
Metal screamed, and systems failed in cascading sparks as he drove the ship sideways with a roar that ripped apart the superstructure and shattered its spine.
It cartwheeled into the ridge and exploded in a violent bloom of flame, shockwaves rolling outward and flattening what remained of the nearby tents.
The larger corvette clawed for altitude.
Idan crossed the distance in a blink and struck its flank, momentum and will braided into a single, merciless line.
