The vessel slammed into the ground and skidded across the valley floor, engines shrieking until it came to a rest on its side.
Its propulsion systems shut down with a whine, and moments later, hatches blew open.
Pilots and Rhixon guards spilled from the wreckage and ran, weapons abandoned, terror plain on their faces.
A pair of flyers hovered higher, retreat already written into their arc.
Idan turned in time to see Ty Si’Rhix through the cockpit glass.
The man’s face was pale, drained of color, eyes dilated with disbelief, mouth working around a scream no one would hear.
The aircraft veered hard and fled into the dark.
Idan let them go, vowing that Ty Si’Rhix would not have an easy death by downing his vessel.
Nada, he would die of slow torture, his limbs torn apart and his skin seared atom by atom until his screams tore up the sky.
Idan landed amid the wreckage of the clinic, surrounded by fires and implosions from which smoke billowed in heavy gusts.
The crackling of the inferno was broken only by distant sobbing and the ragged breaths and moans of the wounded.
Medics worked on the injured out in the open, on the grass patches not affected by the battle. Patients staggered, bloodied and stunned, clutching one another before collapsing to the ground.
Idan ripped through the space, heat-seeking for one soul, and one soul only.
He found Sheba collapsed next to a collapsed column as a blaze around her burned down to embers.
Dirt streaked her skin, and blood darkened her side, her weapon flung aside.
A dark scorch mark on the pillar told the story of a raider’s gun turrets aiming at her.
However, she was conscious, and her eyes tracked his movement with fierce clarity as he rolled the pillar away from her.
‘Idan?’
‘Sheba,’ he rasped, dropping to his knees beside her, gathering her up in his arms.
‘Thank heavens you’re here,’ she whispered, leaning into him, her breath tortured.
‘How hurt are you?’ he growled, his heart contracting with wild emotion.
‘I’m alive,’ she grumbled, running her hands over her flank, wincing as she encountered a laceration to her shoulder, above the line of her tee’s sleeve.
He checked it with care and grunted. ‘Tis a flesh wound, but you’ve lost a good amount of blood.’
‘I’ll besawa, but thatratfokkin’ bastard came to wipe us out,’ she muttered between gritted teeth. ‘Imani is gone, and so is Brad. So much destruction and death, Idan. Why?’
Idan took an inhale, tamping down his fury.
‘I don’t know, but he will pay for his reckless evil,’ he growled.
She slumped onto him, eyes, head bowed, the loss and shock causing her body to shudder. He glided his calloused hands over her uninjured deltoids and back, and in time she calmed and stilled.
Tilting her head up to him, she took a breath. ‘We need to help the survivors.’
‘That wound requires treatment,’ he rasped.
‘Nada, the others come first.’
