My Drath team torches Neb soldiers as they rush out of the crew quarters. Osiris blasts through the enemy on a set of rocket boots he appears to be enjoying. The symbols of vengeance on his face blaze orange as his body blackens and cracks open with his Inferno.
The ship jolts again, and the smoky shield over the windows fades. Stars become visible like the familiar Orillium darting by the glass.
Allele.
On the cracked translation tablet, I see my female withdraw a glowing sword from a sparking shield control panel. She swings the sword with skill and slips it back between her shoulders.
A flash of green electricity lights up the tablet as General Kaslok and his guards argue above me. He doesn’t want to leave. He wants vengeance for his son.
“You won’t get it if you’re dead!” one insists.
They finally manage to lead him away from me and toward an escape pod in the side of the room.
In another window, Aura straightens, demented green electric fingers lashing through soldiers with sinister intent. Twenty Neb soldiers collapse. Brynna charges around him, folds her wings back, and darts through a doorway.
Boots thump behind me. Metal parts ratchet and quiet. A gentle hand touches my shoulder as a female in a Hellion suit drops to her knees beside me. She opens her helmet. “Jorusk…”
I squint up at her and barely make out Brynna’s face.
“Bryn…”
“Hush.” She pushes aside my collar. A pinch to my neck makes me wince. Whatever she’s given me spreads heat through my body.
She runs her hands over my broken wings with pained noises. “Deep breath.”
I try. Stars, do I try.
She sets my wings one at a time.
“Oh, Mother in Magmium!” I wheeze as the scourge of pain tears through me. Heat rushes into the breaks.
The tablet shows my Drath brothers in a furious battle with Neb soldiers in the engine rooms. Another window exposes Blaize pushing back Nebs with angry electric balls of fury until they start to flee in escape pods.
Outside, Allele shoots them with gelatinous green blobs. Their engines fail, and they float aimlessly into space.
“Jorusk, hey.” Brynna touches my face and summons my eyes to hers. “It’s going to be okay. Just stay with me.”
When she kisses me, I wonder why. I’m a bloodied disaster. But there’s something more, something in her scent that stirs my Inferno with increasing energy. It wakes inside my chest. I force my eyes shut, then open them to look up at her more clearly,trying to sort the change in her aroma through the medicine and the poison and pain. “Are you…”
“We’refine.” Brynna smiles at me. “We broke this ship free. But we’ve got to get a hangar open so we can get allies in here to help with all the Nebs.”
I direct her to the tablet, still unsure if I’m detecting what I think I am. “General Kaslok is trying to escape. He’s in a pod.”
Brynna touches her ear. “I need Zariah on the bridge. And someone needs to get that pod launching from general’s quarters. He’s beaten the crap out of Jorusk.”
Aura hurries in and helps me sit up, then carefully works to remove the chains.
A clicking roar enters the doorway. I look up to see the beastly Nebulous soldier that dragged me up here charging toward us, a handgun aimed right for me.
A metal wing unfolds around Aura and me, deflecting his shots. Rapid gunfire booms above my head. Brynna growls as she shoots him over and over until finally, he drops his gun and falls. There’s fire in her eyes like I’ve never seen.
“No one hurts my mate and gets away with it.” Brynna lowers her gun, folds up her wings into a pack against her back, and looks again at the tablet. “Fucker.”
Zariah enters seconds later with Elix guarding her back. She takes the tablet and studies it.
“Can you understand it?” Aura asks.
She nods and works for a second. The red alerts switch off, and the ship begins to move into a firing position toward the rest of the Neb armada still at war. “I have control.”
