Tara saw the bombs falling again, and her heart shook with rage as she realized that that time they were bombing the hospital and the shelter where the eldest and youngest had all taken refuge.
“You bastards!” her scream was one of utter fury, and she was up and moving before she even registered that fact.
Bombs whistled all around as Tara ran for a building, her hands clawing at falling rubble to yank an older man and a terrified woman from the falling debris. Tara’s fingernails were broken and bloody from that and from other rescues.
Laser fire hit the wall right over her head, and she screamed and ducked then rolled along the ground, pressing up hard against a wall that promptly began to topple onto her.
Hands yanked her forward and out. Blade shouted, “Come on! We’re fighting too short on the ground!”
They were short everywhere. Talon and his crews had had to go to the outlying planets above Meridia to try to battle back a massive wave of warships and Meridia had lost too many of its fighter pilots that day. The wreckage of downed ships was everywhere, burning on the streets and on the crushed roofs of the buildings upon which they had landed.
Blade stopped running. She did too. His head went up and back. He tracked a ship, so large its shadow blotted out the sun above them. His lips formed two words that sent horror and fear right into her. “Neutron bombs.”
The bombs that could destroy entire planets. The bombs that could wipe out everything and everyone. The bombs that there was no escape from.
Blade yanked her forward again. Her feet skimmed across the burning ground. Her body was loose with fright, and her brain had gone so numb she could not even fathom what was happening anymore as he pulled her toward a ship that was hastily loading people from the planet onto it.
Bombs everywhere. Federation and rebel ships, locked in lethal combat, blew to bits ahead and the sky was lit with the flaming wreckage. The world had gone upside down somehow, and she was in the center of a war she had never wanted to take part in, but believed in.
Blade’s hands gripped her arms. Tears poured down her face as he said, “Go. Go now, Tara.”
Her heart was like a stone in her chest. Fear, so real and vital she could feel it clawing at her internal organs, rocketed through her and made her entire body take on a high thin trembling that made it hard to keep standing so she leaned against him, feeling the strength of his body, his warm and living body, against her own. “No, not without you. I won’t.”
Blade sucked in a breath. “There’s about two seconds before they blow the entire world we stand on to bits. Goddammit, go. Now.”
Tara knew he was right. She took his hands. Her voice trembled. “If I’m going to die, I want to do it here and now. I don’t want to spend whatever’s left running. Please.”
He whispered, “What are you saying?”
“I’m not running. There’s nowhere to go anyway. You know that. The bombs are hitting everywhere. Everything’s falling. No matter what I won’t get off the surface and if I do what then? The Fed ships will blow whatever ship I’m on to bits. I’m not dying without you.”
They were going to die. Period. Full stop. There was no way around that fact, and she accepted that at that moment. There was nowhere to go and running might prolong it for a few more minutes, but death was inevitable. This was her death, and she would damn well choose how it happened, and she was choosing to be with him.
Blade said, “I love you, Tara.”
Tears streamed down her face. The ground shook below her feet. The Fed ships dropped another bomb, and the earth split and fissured not far from where they stood. Buildings fell. The screams of the wounded rose high in the air and the sound of more ships crashing, bringing flame and death with them, drowned those screams out.
“I love you,” she whispered, “With all my heart and soul, I love you.”
Ash, thick and greasy, rolled over them in a choking wave. Blade drew her into his arms. His mouth came down on hers, his lips holding fast to hers. More bombs whistled down, and the sound of weapon fire rose yet again.
The wind blew the rank smell of scorched earth and the dead to her nose, but she forgot about that; everything faded away as his mouth took hers captive and then plundered it. She could feel the hammering of his heart below his stained and ripped tunic. She could feel the press and thrust of his body against hers and the beat of blood in her veins and the tender and yet demanding feel of his tongue against hers.
The world, the entire universe, was ending. But love was forever, and she gave in to all the things she felt for him, for the strong and proud and sometimes impossible man who had saved her life and then showed her things she had never thought she would see.
That this was the end was not something to fear anymore.
They would be together in this life and the next: she just knew it.
The kiss broke off. The smoke and ash blew harder. Blade’s head tilted back. His eyes, shining bright in his dirty face, suddenly widened. He said, “Oh my God! It’s Talon and his army!”
His hand took hers, and they ran. Her legs pumped fast, and her breath stroked in and out of her lungs like an engine on overtime. The row of hills stood stark and nude; the grass burned to nothing and the sky still dark. The Fed ships fell back, their pilots already wearied by the battle and the losses suddenly more than they were willing to endure as the Revant co-leader of the rebellion zoomed in, his ships armed and his captains fresh and eager for Fed blood.
The battle became a battle in the sky. The bombs stopped falling. The military on the ground began to mobilize.
Blade shouted, “Tara, go help the wounded and get the kids and elderly somewhere out of the range of the weapon fire, help as many as you can!”
She wanted to kiss him again, but there was no time. He was already turning away, his weapons drawn once more and his shouts rallying the ground forces to him, and then he was gone, lost from her sight as they moved forward, determined to end this oppression of the Federation for once and for all.
