A cold knot of dread formed in the pit of my stomach even as the words left my muzzle. Of course, the vile scum would have taken precautions against losing such a valuable "commodity" as Sutton. I was a fool for not anticipating some kind of treacherous contingency like this!
"Brace yourself!" I roared over the shriek of stressed bulkheads as I brought the shuttle's meager armaments online. Jagged lances of ruby light lashed back at our attacker, scoring angry contrails across their forward shielding.
But even as the first salvo raked them, the Arudian vessel unleashed another blistering barrage. Explosions blossomed across the viewport, punching through our failing shields in a starburst of detonations that shook the entire craft like a rabid targ.
I fought the bucking controls with everything I had, jaw clenched so hard the bones creaked as I willed the shuttle to hold together. This could not be how it ended, not after Sutton and I had claimed our bond. Not when the blazing truth of our union had only just ignited!
I would not allow it, by the raging firestorm at the core of existence! If it cost me every last, bloody breath in my body, I would ensure Sutton's survival. She would live to face another dawn, even if I had to tear this cosmos asunder with my bare claws to make it so!
Snarling a wordless vow, I rerouted every scrap of auxiliary power to the forward shielding, desperate to keep our attacker's next salvo from vaporizing us outright. The shuttle's overstressed systems whined in protest, conduits sparking and overloading as the last dregs of the reactor output channeled into the single, overtaxed deflector array.
Sutton cried out, shielding her face as a fresh detonation rocked the cabin. Shrapnel and debris pelted the viewports, spiderwebbing the armored transparisteel in a thousandfracture lines. But the reinforced shielding held, if only for a few precious seconds longer.
"Hang on!" I roared over the shriek of combat klaxons. "I'm going to buy us an opening—you'll need to make for the escape pods while I distract this filth!"
"What?" Sutton's eyes went wide with panic, her slight frame dwarfed by the crash harness strapping her into the co-pilot's station. "No, Raxon! I'm not leaving you!"
"You don't have a choice!" The words tore from my throat in a furious snarl, more harsh and guttural than I'd intended. "This shuttle is dead in the void. Our only chance is to abandon it before we're blasted into so much cosmic detritus!"
Sutton opened her mouth, perhaps to protest further. But another bone-jarring impact cut off whatever argument she might have made. The entire shuttle bucked and heaved, atmosphere venting in a tornadic rush as the rear compartments depressurized.
I had mere moments to act before the slaver's next salvo punched through and atomized us. Instincts took over, honed by a thousand combat drops and hair's-breadth brushes with oblivion. With a flick of my wrist, I armed the shuttle's sole remaining countermeasure—a single, short-burn missile packed with enough explosive fury to level a small settlement.
Not much in the grand scheme of the armaments arrayed against us. But if I timed the launch just right, played this final gambit with all the cold precision that had kept me alive on a hundred suicide runs just like this one...
"Firing missile!" I barked, bracing myself against the control panels as the launcher cycled up to full power. "Launching in three... two..."
The deafening roar of the missile's drivecore spooling up drowned out my words. I watched the tactical display as the single projectile streaked away from the crippled shuttle, lancingout towards the silhouette of the Arudian craft with unerring accuracy.
For a split second, I thought I'd misjudged the timing. That the missile would detonate too early, or burn itself out before reaching its intended target. But then the proximity alarm blared with fresh intensity, and the Arudian ship's forward shielding blazed to incandescent life.
My lips peeled back in a ferocious grin as the missile detonated with the fury of a newborn sun. The shockwave hammered the shuttle's battered hull, rattling every bulkhead and conduit until I tasted blood from biting clean through my tongue. But I barely noticed the pain, so focused was I on the tactical display and the spreading corona of the explosion.
The Arudian craft staggered, its powerful shielding buckling beneath the concentrated onslaught. Debris and twisted wreckage pelted their outer hull in a deadly hailstorm, punching through the weakened deflector arrays in a thousand places.
A cold knot formed in the pit of my stomach as the implications sank in. With their power distribution offline and containment fields failing, the ship's antimatter reactor would destabilize within seconds. And at this range, the ensuing detonation would vaporize what little remained of the shuttle's armored hull, Sutton and I, along with it.
Time seemed to slow to a viscous crawl as the tactical evaluations flickered through my mind's eye. There was no way to avert the impending disaster, no heroic gambit or desperate maneuver that could salvage victory from the jaws of this defeat.
All I could do was make sure Sutton survived the cataclysm somehow. Even if it cost me everything, I would not allow the brilliant flame of her spirit to be extinguished here in the endless night, so far from the warmth and hope she deserved.
I pivoted towards her, mouth opening, to bark out a final order to abandon the shuttle. But the words shriveled on my tongue as I beheld her expression—not one of panic or fear as I'd expected, but that same blazing determination that had first awoken the primal essence slumbering in my soul.
"No," she bit out, each syllable crisp and laced with a core of adamant steel. "We face this together, Raxon. As mates, as partners against whatever fresh terrors await us in that endless dark."
I blinked, taken aback by the sheer intensity blazing behind her gaze. Part of me wanted to roar in denial, to physically drag her to the escape pods if need be and force her to abandon this doomed craft.
But a greater part of me, that primal essence that had awoken and blazed to brilliant life the moment I claimed her as my mate, knew the truth. Sutton was bound to me on a level that transcended these mortal vessels, destined to face whatever mind-bending wonders or soul-shattering terrors as one.
Even if it meant our oblivion here in the endless night, our essences would remain intertwined for all eternity. Twining together in a brilliant union to blaze forth once more, a newborn star to cut through the darkness of a reality realigned around the truth of our bond.
So I simply nodded, letting the weight of that profound acceptance resonate between us. If this was to be our end, our mortal flames extinguished in a blaze of fury, then so be it. We would face it as mates, as partners against the vast, churning tides of existence itself.
"Very well, little mate," I rumbled, the endearment seeming to resonate with the weight of a thousand cosmic truths given breath. "Then we will face this storm together."
Chapter Eleven
Sutton
