Evo walks up to the door and opens it. Craze and Navi squeeze inside and hurry up the ramp of a nearby ship.
“See you on the flip side, Brother,” Craze calls back.
Evo studies me for a second, then turns away and walks toward another ship.
It takes a second to unlock my knees and get me moving after him. There is terrible dejection in his eyes again. I run up the ramp after him. “Evo...”
“Strap in. Ramp closing.” Evo’s already thrown himself into a seat and has the ship warming up. “Solcrue battle cruisers are arriving now. Ship detonation in one minute.
Craze and Navi launch out of the bay beside ours, banking sharply across our opening hangar.
Evo gets us moving out of the bay the second I’m in my seat. I scramble for the belts as we tip to the left and bank after our comrades. Toriszi’s portal is still open. As Craze and Navi disappear inside the ink, the dash lights up with alerts of missiles fired.
A blast slams into our aft shields, sending us careening out of control toward the portal. Toriszi’s ship takes a hit. Shields shimmer blue. He adjusts his position to catch us.
Torizi>>Local: Portal unstable. Hurry.
Evo launches us toward the flickering ink. Portal generator lights ignite at the nose of Torizi’s ship. He’s jumping as we are.
We punch through and exit above a small bright blue planet close to the sun.
Evo swears. “Aft propulsion damaged. We’ve got to land. Gravity has us! Hang on!”
“Where the fuck are we?” I screech as the ship shudders under the turbulence of reentry.
Evo’s eyes shimmer with light as he frantically makes adjustments. The ship rattles and bumps as the atmosphere rips over our ship.
“Evo!”
“I don’t know,” he says loudly back. “It’s not in my memory banks, not my starcharts... Nothing. I’ve got nothing.”
Fear and panic make me grab my harness straps just so I can tack my mind to something solid and real. “Okay. Tell me how to help!”
Evo points to a lever over my head. “Pull it. Flip the switches!”
I eye the rows above me. “How many?”
“All of them. We need as much Terran drag as we can get. Standard Solcrue ships aren’t designed to land like this.”
With shaking hands, I pull the lever down and flip every switch in the nearby cluster. The hull hums, and additional ailerons flare out from the body of the emissary’s cruiser, cutting through fluffy white clouds.
“Landing thruster controls are regulated for ship docking.” Evo motions to a screen. “Override the threshold. Max it out.”
I tap the screen and slide the thruster’s control bar to the maximum. A heavy drone roars under my boots. Our descent slows. My racing heart finds a steadier rhythm.
Evo guides us toward the surface among low, grassy hills. “Protect your head, Aera. This is going to be rough.”
I cover my head with my arms and tuck my knees up to my chest. My body tenses in anticipation.
The ground rushes toward us. Evo locks in a setting. His body liquefies, and he crawls around me until all I see is a curtain of shimmering metal. Evo, the Titan that can turn others to dust, shields me as we bash into the ground with teeth-rattling force.
Gravity tips and rotates around my body again and again.
Evo never lets go.
A devastating blow smashes through us, and I lose myself in a pounding wave of darkness.
Chapter 15: Evo
