Lieutenant Hunter McClane
He was blacking out. No more fighting. His body was practically dead, every muscle giving way like the foundations of a building crumbling under its weight.
His eyes rolled into the back of his head, his lips stiff and bloodless as they stopped gasping for air.
He was dying.
No more question of that now.
As his mind shut down, he thought of her. Not of his brother, not of the Coalition, but Ava.
He felt like his future had just been stolen from him. And that – the injustice, the sheer painful injustice – that was what kept him alive a few seconds longer.
And that was all it took.
The orb began to shake.
The floor beneath him pitched.
It was enough for Shera to lose her balance.
She stumbled to the side, her fingers unwrapping from around Hunter’s throat.
He toppled, his helmet slamming against the floor with a resounding clang.
From somewhere, he found the energy to blink his bleary eyes open. The malfunctioning screen of his helmet managed to resolve the picture of Shera, then, just behind her, his blaster.
The floor continued to pitch.
The orb had to be under some kind of attack.
“What’s going on?” Shera asked breathlessly as she reached a hand out to the wall and locked her fingers over it, finally finding her balance.
Hunter had no such Luck. He simply didn’t have the strength to hold his body in place. He tumbled in every direction as the orb continued to pitch like a ship in a stormy sea.
A few fragments of the destroyed pods clattered past him, banging against his arms and legs, some even sharp enough to cut across his flesh.
He could barely pay heed to the injuries.
Instead, with all his strength, he locked his gaze on his blaster.
Every time the floor pitched, the blaster swayed from side-to-side, clattering a few centimeters towards him only to clatter a meter back.
Inside his mind, he groaned. And he prayed.
Just a little closer.
Come on, just a little closer.
…
Commander Hutchins
As soon as they reached orbit, they opened fire. No more waiting. Just action.
The Mandalay’s guns – or at least the ones they still had access to – locked on that massive silver superstructure and unleashed everything they had.
The long-range sensors were patchy, but she could still detect that the orb had incredible shielding.
Though this was a gamble – and at any second, the orb could return fire – it didn’t.
So the Mandalay kept pounding it with everything it had.
No matter what kind of shielding that orb had, nothing could withstand a barrage like this for too long.
…
Ava
It was when the Prince had dragged her into the orb that the attack began.
Somehow Ava still remained aware enough to keep a scrap of herself connected with the orb.
It told her it was under attack.
Something was shooting them from orbit.
The Mandalay.
It had to be the Mandalay.
Despite her broken, bloodied body, she now had hope.
And that hope kept her aware as the Prince continued to drag her through the now bucking corridors of the ship.
A litany of invectives tumbled from his mouth, every new one more vicious than the last.
His grip around her wrist tightened to the point where he could easily break it.
She paid no attention to the pain snaking up her arm and into her shoulder.
She concentrated on the orb.
Though it had defenses of its own, other than its shields, it wasn’t employing them.
At least, not yet.
As the Prince let another roar tear from his lips, he shifted his hand to the side. Instantly a door ripped through the wall.
She hated that feeling – that noise – it climbed up her spine whenever the metal was torn in two.
It honestly felt as violent and violating as somebody having their body ripped in half.
She had no idea what this orb really was, but in that second, she understood something – the Prince did not belong.
He was alien to the structure. And whatever he intended to use it for, his purpose was against its design.
She felt the ever-growing need to protect it. Protect it like you would your own child.
And yet, she knew that the only way to truly protect it would be to destroy it.
For if she allowed the Prince to use it, and her, to unlock the seal, everything would be lost.
Not just for her. But for the Milky Way. For the universe.
For the force beyond would return.
…
Lieutenant Hunter McClane
Shera locked her muscles, stiffened her back, then sliced her gaze towards him.
Despite the pitching floor, she thrust close, probably rightly realizing that it would be easier to kill him then find out what was happening.
She reached a hand toward him.
His addled, dying mind locked on the space between her fingers as she reached towards him.
The orb pitched once more. More violent than the rest, it practically turned the room on its side.
Hunter was already resting against the wall. She wasn’t. She was thrown off her feet, and she tumbled over the floor until she struck the wall with a clang.
The gun moved too. Towards Hunter.
With one last groan, he opened his palm.
And he caught it.
It landed in his hand with a satisfying clunk.
Shera was just pulling herself to her feet.
Hunter wasted no time.
He pointed the gun at her and fired.
Round after round, though she withstood the first, the second drove her to her knees, and the third robbed her of her life.
Before she died, she had a second to make eye contact one final time.
As he stared into her gaze, Hunter saw something he didn’t expect to see.
Fear. Fragility. Uncertainty, maybe even shame.
A gambler who’d lost.
As Shera’s still body struck the floor, tears flushed through Hunter’s eyes. He was surprised he had the energy to release them. Though he didn’t sob, he let them tumble down his cheeks.
Deep in his heart, he realized this shouldn’t have happened.
It was wrong.
Everything was wrong.
Forces were manipulating the history of the Coalition and the Milky Way – forces that did not belong.
“This is wrong,” Hunter spat, voice practically gurgling from his throat. It was a surprise he could say anything – a surprise he could shift past the swollen mass that was his neck. Shera had almost crushed it into pulp.
And yet… and yet Hunter McClane pushed to his feet.
Don’t ask him how he did it – the energy came from beyond. He locked onto the injustice of the situation and let it power him forward, one staggering step after another. He kept his gun clutched in his hand. When he reached the door, he shifted his gaze back and stared at Shera one last time.
She lay with her face pressed into the floor, her hair a mess around her shoulders.
For a second, he closed his eyes in deference. Then he turned and left the pod-room to continue the fight.
…
Ava
… Prince Zor could not activate the defenses of the orb.
It had taken her until now to realize that. Though he could manipulate some of the systems – certainly faster than she could – he was not in complete control.
And that’s why he needed her.
“The seal, the seal, I will open the seal,” he repeated to himself, voice a low desperate mumble.
It was as if he’d forgotten about her as he dragged her forward.
He paid no heed of their path – and her arms and legs snagged on objects, cutting her skin, seeing her trail her white, blue flecked blood over the once pristine metal.
Finally he reached the center of the ship. That enormous driveshaft with walls that shifted in the blink of an eye.
Its movements were more frantic now. Maybe a reaction to the unending barrage from space. But the metal bricks peeling away from one wall only to slam into the other side of the shaft were more chaotic, the moves less precise. Droplets of metal, almost like blood, oozed down the sides of the walls, raining down the inside of the shaft like a waterfall.
It was a startling sight.
A cold one, too. It wrapped around her heart, sending a palpable shiver shifting through the muscle and almost causing her to burst into tears.
But even if she’d had the tears to cry, she would not waste the energy.
She was not done yet.
True, she couldn’t find the strength to rip her hand from the Prince’s claw-like grasp, but she was awake.
And that was all that mattered.
He would make a mistake.
She would punish him for it.
She held on to that thought. It circled around and around in her mind like an electron orbiting its nucleus, faster and faster, more energy growing in its wake. The more she latched onto that hope, the more hope it gave her. And hope gave her power.
Little by little. Fragment by fragment. Her energy was replenishing.
Suddenly the Prince stopped, just as he reached the edge of the narrow platform that ran around the inside of that shaft. He dipped his head to the side, eyes growing wide and locking on the black corridor they’d just exited through. “The last Avixan is dead,” he said through clenched teeth.
… Hunter.
Hunter had come through.
As Ava concentrated, true hope giving her the energy she needed to connect to the orb’s mind, she realized the Prince was right.
Hunter was alive. He’d managed to destroy the pods.
And he was coming… he was dragging himself through the corridors towards her.
The Prince wasted no more time.
He walked off the side of the thin walkway, dragging Ava with him.
Before desperation could punch through her heart, one of the metal sections of the driveshaft wall punched out and flew underneath the Prince’s feet.
There was barely a jolt as they fell against it.
Ava’s face was pressed against the metal. In patches, it was cold, yet in other patches, it was so warm she could feel her cheek beginning to burn.
And yet she didn’t recede from it.
More than anywhere else in the orb, she suddenly felt connected to the source beyond it.
“Soon. Soon,” the Prince repeated to himself, over and over again, relief filtering through his tone as he let out a desperate, shaking laugh.
“… Where… where are you taking me?” Maybe Ava should remain silent, but the Prince would know she was awake.
He tilted his head towards her. “Your destiny, priestess.”
“… This is not my destiny,” she somehow managed.
His lips cracked into an unstable smile. His gaze was fearful. He was like a man who was on the edge of victory but knew at any moment it could be stolen from him.
Still, that didn’t stop him from leaning down onto one knee, then the next. He pressed a hand into the floor, still keeping his other clasped around her wrist, and he tilted his head to the side, staring down into her eye.
The other eye was pressed against the metal, blood having pooled from the multiple cuts along her cheek and neck and smearing across it, blurring her vision.
But with her one good eye, she stared at him. “Where do you come from?”
His grin stiffened. “Here. This is my home. It has been my home for eons.”
“… This planet?”
“This planet. Your planet. For the Avixans originally came from here, too.”
She shivered, and she realized it was true. That’s what she recognized about this place. It was more than the technology; it was the land. The sky. The darting clouds. It felt like they reached inside her body and struck a chord nothing else could.
She belonged.
She truly belonged here.
The Prince cracked his lips into a higher smile. “You will help me. You know that, don’t you?”
She shook her head. “There’s no way I’m going to help you,” she pushed past the pain to control her voice.
“You will open the seal, or I will destroy the Mandalay. And that man – Hunter McClane. I can sense him in the orb. I will use the corridors to crush him. Unless you help me,” the Prince’s voice dropped low.
Ava didn’t answer.
She knew the Prince didn’t have the control to destroy the Mandalay or to destroy Hunter. If he had that control – he would have done it already.
No, the orb was blocking him, and maybe Ava’s connection was helping keep that block in place.
She didn’t point this out.
She wanted to know his secrets.
So she strung him along. “What… are you talking about? What seal?”
“The seal to beyond. To the door maker.”
“Door maker? What—” An intense shiver crossed through her body. It was so violent it almost tugged her hand from the Prince’s grip, but he redoubled it as he leaned forward.
His face brushed against hers. “It will open a rift to the force beyond. The force that will claim the Milky Way, then the universe. The force that truly belongs.”
She shook her head.
“This orb possesses a door maker, but only on a small scale. It enabled me to create wormholes – to bring you all the way to the lost star. But to bring back the Force – I will need access to the final door maker drive.”
“… And you need me to open that?”
“Yes,” he hissed as he pressed his cheek against hers. His skin was cold. Truly cold. It felt as if it sapped any warmth that remained in her body and turned her to ice.
And yet she pressed on. “You brought me here? Why?”
“Because the other priestesses found out what I was planning. They sealed themselves, and the chief priestess killed herself. Without a priestess, I cannot open the seal.”
Realization punched through Ava’s heart.
The priestesses had not turned against one another. They had deliberately locked themselves off from this man.
“But the priestesses could not contact you in time. I have manipulated the resistance from the beginning. Crafted them into what they are now.”
“But the resistance tried to kill me.”
“Yes. Before I realized the priestesses had locked themselves away. But when you became the last, you became my only option.” The Prince still had his head pressed against Ava’s, his parted lips whispering into her ear.
“… You’re the force behind the resistance?”
“Yes,” he hissed, every S elongated like hisses of steam, “I forged them. Sowed the seed of discontent.”
“Why?”
“Because I require you Avixans, require your power.”
“For your mannequins?”
“And more.”
“And you knew we wouldn’t help you – so you destroyed our society,” she said, true bitterness twisting through her words as her fight ignited in her gut.
“Yes. I needed the real power you Avixans are capable of. But in order to get it, I had to stoke your rage. I had to crush the social mores that kept you back. But none of that matters now, priestess, all that matters is the final seal. You will open it, won’t you?”
“… Only if you promise to save the Mandalay, Hunter, and the Coalition. You have the power to do that, don’t you? To protect them?”
He didn’t hesitate to lie. “Yes. You have my word. But you must open the seal. If you don’t, I will kill every last Avixan. I will not hesitate to hunt them down. I can do it remotely. I have access to the energy that keeps them sustained. If you do not assist me, the blood of your people will be on your hands. And yet if you assist me, you can ensure the continued survival of the Coalition and every citizen under her wing. You, priestess, can save everyone. Only if you help me.”
“… I’ll help you.”
“Good girl,” he hissed as he finally pulled his cheek off hers and stood.
As he stepped out of Ava’s view, she saw that the metal platform they were on continued to descend through the shaft.
And the shaft continued to melt, more and more molten metal dripping down the sides.
Though the metal platform they were on did not shake, the walls shuddered more and more violently.
The Mandalay kept up its attack.
It was now a race against time.
…
Lieutenant Hunter McClane
His mind was a daze, thoughts a cloud that settled through his consciousness, spread so thinly he could barely follow them.
The only thing he could follow was his heart as it rammed away in his chest. It kept his bleary eyes open, kept his bloody fingers locked against the wall as he pressed forward.
The orb appeared to be leading him toward some point.
A few seconds later, he arrived at it.
The door opened out into… an enormous, incredible driveshaft.
He’d never seen anything like it. Its sheer magnitude was beyond any technology the Coalition had access to.
It stretched so high and so far down, he couldn’t see where it began and where it ended.
The orb kept shaking from side-to-side, every new shudder more violent than the previous.
As he was pushed off balance and slammed a hand into the wall beside him, his fingers started to shove through it as the metal began to melt.
He jerked back and stared at the wall for a single second before it shattered. As soon as those broken fragments hit the floor, they oozed into a puddle of metal and disappeared through invisible cracks beneath his feet.
… The orb was failing.
“Ava,” her name cracked from his lips.
He could turn around, follow the corridors back out to the light bridges beyond, and hope he could make it to the waiting cruiser in time. He didn’t.
He thrust forward.
At that exact moment, his boots skidded on some new puddle of molten metal, and he fell right off the side of the walkway.
For a single second, he tumbled in free fall.
Then a metal platform shot out of the wall beside him and formed beneath his plunging body.
His shoulder struck the side of it, and yet the metal somehow shifted to absorb the blow.
Then the platform began to descend. With him on it.
He pushed up, locking one shaking, completely fatigued hand onto the metal and forcing his bleary eyes open.
He watched his platform descend.
Descend through a shaft of melting metal.
He pressed himself right against the edge of the platform.
Far below, he saw another platform.
Though it was right at the edge of his sight, his helmet – which miraculously was relatively intact – had repaired just enough to focus in on the view.
Ava.
With Prince Zor.
His face was pressed right up against hers. Then the Prince shifted back and stood.
Hunter’s heart wanted to shoot from his chest and slam into Zor.
A second later, the platform they were on stopped.
It suddenly shifted sideways right towards the shaft wall.
Before Hunter could scream out in fear, a doorway opened at the base of the shaft, and that platform shifted through it.
His heart exploded in his chest as he saw the cube she was on disappear into the side of the wall. Droplets of metal continued to hail down from the walls as if he was suspended in the universe’s strangest waterfall.
The ship continued to shake, too - an unholy rattling that shook and vibrated through the ceiling and walls. Hunter instinctively knew that if he weren’t suspended on this slowly descending metal cube, he would have been pitched about so violently, he wouldn’t have been able to get to his feet. “Come on, come on,” he said through clenched, locked teeth.
He didn’t think about the stakes of this situation – the unholy price of losing here today. He locked every gram of attention on the base of the shaft. With every breath and spinning thought, he begged his cube to go faster.
Like it or not, he was Ava’s only hope. And if he was Ava’s only hope, he was the universe’s only hope, too.
…
Captain Harvey McClane
It didn’t take long for him to wake in the med bay. The chief medical officer ordered him to stay put, but he wouldn’t. Couldn’t. He would not see this battle out on the sidelines.
Shera was dead. That fact slammed into him as he dragged himself from the med bay. The memory of their once caring relationship still haunted him. As pathetic as it sounded, a part of him still couldn’t believe this had happened. Call it crazy, but in another situation, another place, a parallel universe, maybe, he could have easily envisioned another future with Shera. He had to push that unsettling thought from his mind, though, as they were too close to the end to become distracted now.
Finally the super-fast lift he was in pinged, and he arrived on the bridge. He sprang out, or at least moved as fast as his broken body would allow. He was so dosed up on stims, his teeth were practically chattering in his skull.
Hutchins bolted up from his command seat. Her eyes opened wide as they looked at him. “Sir, what are you doing out of the med bay?”
All the eyes of the bridge crew locked on him.
He gathered his body together, scrounged every last scrap of energy, and faced them. Though he should have probably shuffled over to his command seat and latched a hand on the back of it for support, he didn’t.
He faced them, and they faced him.
He had to clench his teeth and tense every muscle down into his back and sides to stand unassisted. He did it. Because right now he would do everything to win.
Maybe now was a good time to offer some impassioned speech. You know, chuck his head back, stare at each member of his crew in turn, and tell them all in a chest-thumping tone that no matter the odds, they could do this.
He didn’t. He simply made sustained eye contact. His gaze said it all. For every member of his crew met his gritty look and returned it with one of their own.
Instantly Hutchins was beside him, though she didn’t automatically reach out a hand to stabilize him. She wouldn’t undermine his command like that. She really was the best commander he’d ever met. She knew when to support him and knew when to let him fall on his own.
“Captain, we’re continuing the barrage on the orb. It’s strong. Got shielding the likes of which we’ve never seen. Our sensors can barely penetrate it, but we must be having some effect, however small.”
“Keep it up,” Harvey growled. “We have to give them everything we’ve got, but we also have to keep some weapons in reserve. Who knows if Zor will send reinforcements?”
There was a truly ominous note to Captain Harvey McClane’s voice. But in that moment, he couldn’t appreciate just how prescient he was.
…
Prince Zor
The Mandalay was meddling. They were all meddling. Those fools from the Coalition, they were trying one last-ditch, desperate, ultimately futile attempt to stop him.
Nothing would stop him. Not now he’d come this far.
Finally their transport cube pushed through the wall.
No metal droplets splashed over his face or arms – he was protected from that constantly falling flurry.
Yet, as he tipped his head back and stared at the damage along the shaft wall, he clenched his teeth and hissed. Those inbreds had done more damage than he’d anticipated.
No matter. In minutes, he would destroy their ship. For good.
The priestess was still too weak to move. He wasn’t an idiot, though. This time, he was determined to keep his eyes on her. She had almost escaped from him before.
Her breath was uneven.
Though it appeared she barely had the energy to stay conscious, let alone fight, a determined expression was still visible on her face. For a few seconds as they continued sideways through the wall, he let that impossible determination distract him. Then he jerked his head up as a low, sonorous hum echoed through the corridor.
He could see it above him - the pulsing heart of the orb.
It was mesmerizing, every beat like the thrumming pulse of a heart. It had an effect on the priestess. She stilled her breath, her eyes growing wide as she valiantly tried to tip her head back.
He parted his lips back and sniggered through them. “You can feel it, can’t you?” he hissed through his clenched teeth. “It’s calling out to you, your destiny.”
She tried to spread her lips back and snarl but obviously couldn’t scrounge the energy.
He laughed at her pathetic attempt. Then, energy renewed, he tipped his head back and took in the sight above him with an exhilarating breath. Not much longer now, that voice in the back of his head incanted.
Not much longer now.
Finally they came to a stop before an enormous platform. He tipped his head back and took in the sheer magnitude of the structure above them.
Its architecture was on an astounding scale. It led the eye back towards the huge, pulsing drive in the center of the chamber. Around it ran banks of platforms that shifted in a constant dance. The room was lit in pulsing shades of blue and red light.
And that hum continually vibrated through everything.
He heard the priestess hiss in surprise, heard her try to shift up.
He brought a foot up and locked it on her shoulder, pausing for just a second before he drove her down. She could have tried to fight him but didn’t bother wasting her precious little energy.
“That’s right. That’s right,” he hissed. Then he snapped his attention back up to the Central Drive. There he would be able to end this.
He shifted back, but as he did, another explosion slammed into the side of the orb, shaking the central chamber with such force, it appeared that the massive pulsing drive above might be torn from its pulsating frame and fall to the base of the shaft kilometers below. “Not yet, not yet,” he hissed.
Finally they docked with the side of a ramp.
He lunged forward, never pausing.
He hissed again, the sound so loud, it reverberated around him.
He dragged the priestess behind him. There was nothing she could do. Indeed, she did not even try to fight him. She lay there, weak in his grasp, her body thumping as it grated over every new section of path.
“What… what will you… do?”
“End this.” He wasted nothing on frivolous words.
The snaking paths were in such an arrangement that he had to navigate a delicate route as he circled back towards the main drive. The main drive was not his intended target, however. Instead, he headed towards a bank of floating consoles just below it.
He felt the priestess momentarily tense in his grip as they neared. It brought a sneering smile to his face. She would be able to feel the power of the drives, just as he could. But she would not be able to manipulate them. Now he’d learned of what she could do, he had blocked her out.
Perhaps she tried, though. Perhaps that was the reason for the sudden quick pace of her breath. He could even feel her heartbeat quicken and pound through his grip along her arm.
She tried to resist, tried to slow the inevitable. She couldn’t.
Finally he made his way around the meandering pathways until he reached the correct section. His heart quickened as he neared.
Soon.
Soon.
He jerked towards a console just as it rose towards him. He flattened his fingers over the controls as a rush of exhilaration slammed through his heart.
With a few easy, quick, practiced movements, he did it. He let himself appreciate that fact, soaking in a welcome sense of victory. Then he turned his attention on the priestess.
It was time to end this.
…
Captain Harvey McClane
It was just when they weren’t expecting it that it happened. Something slammed into the side of the Mandalay. It was so quick and traveled so fast that their sensors didn’t even have an opportunity to pick it up. There was no warning until it hit. Then structural alarms blared through the bridge, so loud and insistent, even the dead would be able to hear them.
He threw out a hand and locked it on the back of his seat, holding himself in place.
As soon as the shaking stopped long enough for him to catch his breath, he twisted his full attention and locked it on Hutchins. “What was that?” he stuttered and choked over his words.
It seemed every single warning alarm on the Mandalay was sounding all at once.
Hutchins threw herself forward and launched at the tactical station.
She hissed.
She jerked back, locked a sweaty hand on her mouth, and swore. “It’s some kind of planetary harpoon,” she choked over her words.
“Harpoon?” he stammered.
“It’s dragging us down to the surface of the planet!”
Harvey snapped his head forward and stared.
…
Ava
She had to stop him.
Find some way. Any way.
They were in some kind of central drive chamber. It was the heart of the orb. The heart of the planet, even. She didn’t need the Prince to tell her that – she knew it. The knowledge pulsed deep in her heart with every beat of that pulsing core.
He’d done something – typed something with manic glee into a glowing set of consoles.
Immediately she felt the orb shift. It was connected to her mind now, and she could sense its mood, despite the fact it should have been nothing more than a collection of technology. It had a personality. And now it was crying out as it was being forced to do something it didn’t want to.
She clenched her teeth together, grinding them back and forth, back and forth, in her endless attempts to gather back her energy.
When he’d defeated her out on the light bridges, he’d taken it all. Now she had to dig deep to retrieve every scrap she could.
This massive central drive room was lit by glowing red and blue lights that pulsed down from above. They made the shadows around the Prince’s feet and under his eyes all the darker until they hinted at the depths of the furthest reaches of space.
She was still on the floor at his feet where he had abandoned her. Though these enormous intertwining moving connecting platforms that ran around the central pulsing drive core could hardly be classed as floors. It was like standing on flat snakes circling around an orb of light.
The metal below her wasn’t cold or hot. It wasn’t smooth or rough. It was… unlike any material she’d ever felt before. It yielded to her skin and yet at the same time had the rigidity of steel.
Finally the Prince took a step back, a smile curling over his lips as he turned sharply, tilted his head down, and glared at her.
She knew what he was going to do long before he lurched down to one knee, wrapped stiff fingers over her collar, and jerked her up.
She had to stop the fear that threatened to rise through her heart and see her teeth jitter in her skull. She wouldn’t let him make her afraid.
Not again. Not ever. So as he brought his sneering face close to hers and he pared back his teeth until she could see his stiff canines glinting back at her, she glared. If she could have strangled him with her eyes, she would have.
It appeared to have an effect on him – and as she looked deep into his gaze, a single speck of fear flared. But he brushed it away as he pulled his lips hard to the side and snarled. “Your turn, priestess. It is time to attend to your date with destiny.”
“I’ll find some way to throw you off this walkway,” she snarled back. It was hard to control her voice, hard because she could barely control the muscles in her chest sufficiently to breathe. But she managed it, using every scrap of energy she could.
Again that flare of fear sparked deep in his gaze, but again he pushed it back.
He locked a hand around her collar and began to drag her back. His footfall was rough, determined, ringing with every step. And she banged along the path, her arms and legs snagging on rough sections of metal.
She paid no attention whatsoever to the pain that leaped through her legs and high into her shoulders. She darkened her gaze, locked it on the Prince’s shadow beside her, and used every scrap of will and attention she had to draw back her power. For even if she didn’t scrounge enough to fight the Prince directly, she would find another way to end this. Even if she had to end herself.
As that dark thought crossed through her mind, another rose up to meet it on the wings of hope.
Could he still be out there? Hunter? Could he be coming for her?
…
Lieutenant Hunter McClane
“Come on. Come on,” he screamed at the cube as it finally shifted towards the wall. Rather than being swallowed up by the dripping metal, the cube pushed its way through. It was the strangest experience of his life. Had his mind not been pulsating on adrenaline and fear, he would have paid more attention to the eerie feeling of slipping under a metal waterfall.
He focused all his attention on the corridor forming around him and on the Prince, wherever he was.
Just as the cube pushed deeper into the ship and he felt a strange pulsating ringing through the air, he felt something else. From deep within his heart, from right in the center of his mind – a far-off scream.
He’d never heard anything like it and fell down to one knee as he brought a hand up and clutched it over his brow, digging the fingers in hard as he grabbed his ear to block it out.
As pain split through one temple to the other with all the force of a sword driving through butter, he clenched his teeth and bellowed.
… A second later, that splitting feeling stopped suddenly. The scream died off, too.
His eyes bolted wide. He thrust to his feet, head snapping left and right as he looked for the source of that strange sensation.
… He felt it. The orb. He… had no psychic skills to speak of. He wasn’t a mindair. And yet, in that moment, he knew one thing – the orb had reached out to him. It had pushed some force into his mind, some force it could use to communicate with him. And it had. With one unending petrified scream.
He still had a hand latched on his face, his fingers still locked hard into the skin around his eyes.
The cube shuddered forward, finally pushing through a massive section of metal until it reached… a sight the likes of which he’d never seen.
Massive didn’t do it justice. It was on a scale larger than anything he’d ever encountered. Though the driveshaft around him wasn’t bigger than a planet and had to, logically, fit within the orb, its size was more than that. The sheer scale of the huge pulsing, vibrating ball of light felt universal.
Though the scene was truly remarkable, it wasn’t distracting enough to pull his attention from two figures making their way around the snaking platforms that orbited that ball of light like moons around a planet.
“Ava, hold on,” he opened his mouth and screamed, forcing his voice to become as loud as it could. It pitched out of his throat and echoed around the room like a clap of thunder.
The two figures above were far away, but he watched as the larger one paused and snapped its head towards him.
Maybe he shouldn’t have brought attention to himself. Maybe that was foolish. Maybe he should have tried to secretly sneak up on the Prince, but that wasn’t the point. Hunter had to get the Prince’s attention now and stop him from doing whatever the hell he was about to do.
“Come and get me, you monster,” Hunter taunted him.
Of its own accord, the cube he was on was nearing what looked like a docking station – a larger section of snaking metal path pushed out to meet it.
He heard the Prince bellow. It was such a loud, reverberating sound it was as if his voice could split right through the metal walls.
Immediately the Prince brought a hand around, and though he didn’t appear to have a weapon, that didn’t matter. He spread his hand wide and started to shoot at Hunter, bolts of white-blue energy flowing from the Prince’s hand and slamming into the cube beside Hunter.
Hunter docked with the path just in time and thrust forward, pushing into a roll and snapping to his feet. He sprang across the path with all the speed he could muster. Though his fight with Shera had taken its toll – and had robbed his body of most of its energy – right here, right now, that didn’t matter. Absolute bolts of adrenaline shot through him, powering into every muscle and pushing them far beyond his pain barrier.
He sprang forward, dodging to the side on pure instinct alone and somehow managing to miss every shot from the Prince.
As the Prince continued to try but fail to get Hunter, he screamed in frustration, his bellowing shouts echoing off every wall.
Though Hunter should have only paid attention to where he was going, occasionally he stole glances of Ava. She was crumpled at the Prince’s feet. Though the Prince shot at Hunter with one of his hands, he kept the other locked around her collar.
Hunter’s helmet was barely functioning, and most of its capabilities had shut down due to abuse. It could still zoom, though, so he made it focus as it locked on her expression.
He expected to see fear. Crumpled, abject fear.
That’s not what he saw – just more determination.
It brought a stiff smile to his lips as he continued to throw himself forward.
That screaming in his mind did not return. It had been replaced by a dull sense of dread.
He knew the orb was mere seconds from being forced to do something it didn’t want to. Don’t ask him how, but he knew it had something to do with the Mandalay.
She’d be in trouble. And though his brother was a hell of a captain, there were some things you couldn’t fight against. So he threw himself even faster along the path.
The thing was taking a circuitous route to Ava, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. Or at least, that’s what he thought.
Just as he stumbled and caught his balance in time, he clutched one hand onto the edge of the path… and… in a split second, connected to it.
His mind just expanded, pushing into the metal with all the ease of a hand sailing through the air.
Click. The path he was on suddenly began to move faster, jerking to the side just as the Prince shot at it with such aim it should have taken Hunter’s head clean off.
He fell down to both knees and locked his hands around the path. Just in time. It veered off and suddenly began to ascend at a near-vertical angle. If it weren’t for the gauntlet around one of his hands, he would have tumbled back and fallen far down into the murky depths of the driveshaft below. As it was, he split his lips open and screamed as the path shot towards the Prince.
The Prince fired, but his aim wasn’t accurate, and his blast glanced off a section of the path and ricocheted towards one of the walls.
Finally, with a shuddering bang, Hunter’s path slammed into the Prince’s. It didn’t obliterate them, however, and the two connected, sheets of metal rolling out and interlocking like fingers.
Hunter pitched forward, rolled, and jumped to his feet. Just in time.
The Prince sprang towards him with all the power and speed of a cheetah.
He moved so fast that although he was a good 10 meters in front of Hunter, all Hunter saw was the Prince’s glinting white teeth as he screamed. Then they met.
The Prince slashed forward with one of those eerie blue-white blades.
Hunter ducked just in time, shifting back and pitching his chest to the side as the Prince’s blade sliced past his arm.
He jerked back, flipped, and landed a few meters away.
It was quick – the fastest move he’d ever executed – but it wasn’t quick enough. The Prince was upon him. He sprang forward like a loaded spring and kicked Hunter hard in the gut. Before Hunter knew what the Prince was doing, he clutched hold of Hunter’s helmet. The Prince ripped it off so quickly the helmet didn’t have a chance to disengage. It took great chunks of Hunter’s cheeks and the back of his head with it, blood splattering everywhere as he screamed in anguish.
He fell down to one knee as a flood of fear and fatigue robbed him of his strength. The pulsing lights of the drive core kept flickering in and out behind him, casting the Prince in lines of shadow. The Prince tucked his head down, darkness gathering beneath his eyes and chin and lips as he sneered.
He took one step forward, brought his blade around, and placed it gently against Hunter’s neck. The searing light burned his skin.
He screamed. And he stared. Right up into the Prince’s eyes. Right up into the end.
Though Hunter wanted to face the Prince – face his executioner – in another second, Hunter’s gaze tore itself off the Prince and locked on Ava. She was still a few meters away, too far to stretch a hand out to.
Their gazes locked. And they shared something – true disappointment. True soul-crushing disappointment that it would end like this.
…
Captain Harvey McClane
“Redirect power from everything – life-support, gravity, the shields, whatever we’ve got. Keep this ship together,” he screamed as he wrapped both arms around the back of his chair in his desperate attempt to keep his feet on the pitching, bucking floor.
It was an impossible task.
The ship was literally falling apart around his ears. Structural plating kept peeling off from the ceiling above and hailing down in a deadly rain. If his crew hadn’t been so well-trained, they would have all been crushed by it. They ducked and dodged, several security officers shooting at sections of reinforcing struts before they could squash tactical officers.
He had no idea how they were all still standing. But they were.
Commander Hutchins fell to the side, and just before a massive section of wriggling, sparking neural wire could slam into her from above, she kicked back, locked a hand on the console before her, and shoved into a quick roll. She flipped to her feet, sprang forward, and threw herself at the nearest workstation. Blood trickled down from a massive gash that ran from her brow right down to her left ear. Her hair was a tangled, knotty, bloody mess.
But her eyes – they blazed with nothing more than undiluted, unbreakable determination. “We’ve got one minute, sir. One minute,” she spat.
He didn’t need to ask for clarification – he understood what one minute meant. One minute before the structural integrity of the Mandalay was torn asunder. They wouldn’t just be pulled to the planet below and crash land in the massive worldwide ocean – they would be torn apart.
Though he wanted to scream at Hutchins to do something, this was the bit where he had to decide how to save his ship. They barely had any weapons left – they’d used most of their strongest firepower in trying to take down the orb.
Now they scarcely had anything left to sever the massive pulsing electric hook locked onto the underbelly of the Mandalay.
He tried everything - redirecting energy blasts down the hook, even pushing engines to full to try to pull back out of its deadly grasp.
Nothing. Nothing would work.
… A part of him realized how bittersweet this would be. He’d pushed past Shera – which had at first seemed like an impossible task – but ultimately it wouldn’t matter.
The Mandalay would cease to exist. Every man and woman on board would die. And the galaxy… it would probably be extinguished with them.
…
Ava
There comes a time in a priestess’s life where she can make a difference. A time where she can hold true to the sacred rules and traditions of her race.
That time was now.
For she was the last priestess, and if she didn’t find the strength to fight Prince Zor now, it would all be over.
The orb was fighting the Mandalay. Her tenuous connection to its systems told her as much. And the Mandalay – it was seconds, precious seconds from being destroyed.
Everything was coming to a head. A crescendo. A calamitous roar that echoed through her mind and threatened to turn her brain to pulp.
She watched in terror as the Prince moved over Hunter, drawing his glowing sacred blade slowly across Hunter’s cheek. The move wasn’t intended to detach Hunter’s head, just to burn every scrap of skin along his neck and cheek.
Hunter screamed. Or at least at first he did. A second later as the tip of the blade finally fell from his face, he gritted his teeth, steeled his groaning breath, and stared up at the Prince with all the rage he could muster.
With the pulsing lights of the core just behind them, it lit up the scene with an eerie glow. It made every shadow darker, every highlight brighter as Hunter struggled to keep himself upright on his knees. But somehow he managed it. And somehow he tore his gaze off the Prince once more to lock it on her.
So much passed in that gaze. Though it lasted for only half a second, eternity pushed between them.
Not just eternity for the universe, but more specifically, for her.
She’d never desired much in her life. Freedom. Ease. That’s why she’d joined the Academy, after all. But this journey had sought her out. Chance and destiny had brought her to this point.
Now the ultimate reward for that fight – time to explore her relationship with Hunter – was about to be wrenched from her.
The Prince lurched forward, forming a small dagger in the center of his palm. He would plunge it through Hunter’s heart, and Hunter would die. Instantly. With no reprieve, with no hope of salvation.
Hunter clearly knew what was about to happen, and a truly sad expression grew over his face as he looked at her one last time. “You can do it,” he said.
“No,” she screamed. It was more than a scream. More than a last-ditch shriek at the injustice of this situation.
It possessed a pitch and force beyond her. For in that moment, she connected to the orb in full. As their despair peaked, they aligned.
The entire orb shook. Not just the pulsing orb of light to their left, but every wall, every path.
Just before the Prince could impale Hunter through the heart, the Prince was thrown to the left. There was nothing he could do. He was on his feet, unbalanced as he thrust towards Hunter, and the suddenly violent shaking path caught him off guard.
He was thrown off it.
Right off the side.
Hunter wasn’t. He was on his knees, and just in time he doubled forward and wrapped his arms around the path, sweaty, bloody fingers scrabbling against the metal for purchase.
The path didn’t shake for her. Somehow the section she was on remained perfectly still. The orb would not let her move.
She heard Prince Zor’s scream split through the shaft room as he fell. And fell. And fell.
Though he tried to lurch his falling body towards one of the sections of path, they snaked away from him, shooting from his grip.
The pitch of his scream became more insistent. Then she felt it – his last desperate effort to reconnect to the orb.
As she ground her teeth as hard as she could together, she forced all of her attention into the orb, and she fought him back. It was as if she had both hands around his neck and she suddenly used every scrap of energy she could to press. And press. And press.
Far, far below, there was a shudder as something – someone – hit the end of the shaft.
Then silence.
The orb stopped shaking.
“Ava… Ava,” Hunter called as he unhooked his crooked, stiffened fingers from around the path and stretched a hand towards her.
Somehow she found renewed strength and pushed to her feet, staggered towards him, and fell to her knees.
She wrapped a hand around his, and, unbelievably, he had the strength to lock his fingers through hers.
She helped him up to one knee. Every breath tore through his chest, shook through his sternum, and powered down his back. There was so much blood splashing over his cheeks and down his neck that it sent a nauseous pain slicing through her gut. But that didn’t stop her from drawing forward and locking her hand over his shoulder. “Hunter,” she said his name in a shaking voice.
“Ava, you have to find some way to destroy the orb. Now. Before the Prince comes back.”
“He’s dead,” she began. But even as she said it, she knew it wasn’t true. It was almost as if a part of the Prince couldn’t die.
… That harrowing realization shot through her mind as she heard something from below. A strange hissing noise. With every second it grew louder and louder until it shook up the shaft with such an insistent pitch, she yanked her hand off Hunter’s shoulder and slammed it over her ear.
The both of them hunkered down against the path in agony as they fought against that piercing sound.
The hiss suddenly shifted pitch and changed into something. A voice. A booming voice.
A violent shiver passed down her shoulders and jolted so hard into her back, it felt as if she would lurch to the left and fall off the path. Something kept her locked in place. Her connection to the orb.
She felt its panic. Heard it in her mind as it screamed over and over again.
The Prince was only half Avixan. She was about to find out what that other half was, wasn’t she?
She could feel something rising through the room. She felt it in her whole body. A prickle across her skin, a cold feeling shooting through her chest, and sweat slicking across her brow.
Somehow Hunter must have felt it, too, because with his eyes bulging with fear, he used the last of his strength to shift forward, lock a hand on the edge of the path, and stare down.
Together they squinted into the dark until they saw it.
A light.
A white, flickering, pulsating light. It wasn’t just white – it was surrounded by crackles of black energy that shot up in every direction, slammed against the walls, and ate into them with hissing bites.
“What the hell is that?” she screamed.
The Prince.
It was the Prince.
Maybe she’d managed to kill his Avixan side by throwing him off of this path. But the rest of him – it was ready to end the fight.
She suddenly latched a hand on Hunter’s shoulder and pulled him up. She had no idea where she found the strength. She shouldn’t have. She should have been robbed of every last scrap of power she had. Yet she wasn’t. For in that moment she was still aligned with the orb. Not just the orb – this planet. Its history. The history of her people.
And that – the weight of that awesome legacy – pushed her on.
Somehow Hunter only needed a little help to stand. Though he leaned heavily into her arm, he found the strength to take a shaking step forward, then another. Before she knew it, they were half running. The path they were on suddenly scooted to the side, avoiding a massive pulse of that black-white light as it shot high through the shaft and slammed into the ceiling far above. It was so powerful that it ripped off a massive chunk of the ceiling and revealed a huge section of pulsing wires above.
She half tipped her head up to stare at it as metal plating from the ceiling hailed down, smashed into several sections of path, and obliterated them completely.
They continued running together, and the path continued to push them forward, propelling them towards a hole that suddenly formed in the wall to their left.
She had to get out of this room. The orb told her that. Her instincts told her that. The seal was in here. In the heart of that glowing, pulsing ball of light. And if she was thrust into that seal, regardless of whether she chose to help the Prince or not, she would open it. For now she had killed his Avixan form, his other side – that source of pure power – would force her.
She felt another rising scream pitch through the shaft. It echoed and blasted like a thunderous clap of lightning by her ear.
She shuddered forward, but just as she threatened to lose balance, she felt Hunter’s hand curl around her own. There was something so reassuring about his fingers, so anchoring. In that split second, he took her away from here. Away from the shaking, breaking room. Away from the horror of the Prince. It was all washed aside. And all that remained was Hunter McClane. A possibility. A question mark. A man who at first she’d hated but now couldn’t imagine her life without.
“We can make it. We can make it,” he screamed.
His hopeful words had an effect on her; she found a sudden burst of energy. She locked a hand harder around his arm and pulled him forward. Just in time. They made it to that hole in the wall.
Behind, a massive rush of black-white energy spewed through the shaft, suddenly obliterating the path. Shrieking metal filled the air as the room absolutely convulsed.
She stood in the doorway, twisted her head to the side, and stared in horror as that white-black energy took on a form. A face. Prince Zor’s face. But something more. Though it resembled his features, the menace it conjured was beyond him. Beyond the Avixans. The humans. Any race in the Milky Way. It was beyond the universe.
It reached right inside her and tapped some root of primal fear she had never known existed. She’d never felt so petrified.
Hunter pulled her forward. Just in time. For that looming white-black cloud of a face rushed in, opening its mouth wide as if it were trying to swallow her whole.
They jolted out of the doorway just in time. It slammed shut. From beyond, she heard an unholy noise as the Prince’s face slammed into the wall. The screech of metal and blare of warning alarms filled the air.
She twisted her head forward to find they were both on a silver-white path that snaked through the innards of the ship. They were surrounded by glowing wires, pulsing beams of light, and shifting devices slamming into walls and melting through the floor.
Though she had to get away from the Prince, her mind had not completely been stripped away from the Mandalay. If she didn’t find a way to save it, there would be no one to save her and Hunter. And they needed backup. There was no way they could destroy the Prince in his current form on their own.
“Hunter, you have to direct me.”
“What?” His head spun around, and his pulsating gaze locked on hers.
“Help me. I need to concentrate. I won’t be able to—”
Hunter pitched forward and pulled her off her feet.
He shouldn’t have had the strength to do it. He was a large man, muscular, well-trained. If this had been an ordinary situation – and he hadn’t just been through a brutal fight – he could have done it. As it was, his whole body was bruised and broken. Yet he found the strength from somewhere to raise her up.
Despite the situation – the fear, the desperation – she felt hope. Passion. They rocketed through her heart at once. It could have been so tempting to lock her gaze on the underside of his jaw, to appreciate his strong grip around her body.
Not now. Not yet.
“I’ve got you,” he said.
There was something so reassuring about his voice that it allowed her eyes to close.
And she concentrated with all her might.
There had to be some way to help the Mandalay, and she was going to find it.
…
Captain Harvey McClane
Seconds. They had seconds. Maybe one, maybe two. But no more.
They would die.
There was no question of that.
The conclusion was now forgone. He would go down with his ship. And all his crew would come with him.
Solemn despair spread through his heart, melting away every last scrap of hope.
He stood, Commander Hutchins by his side, the both of them staring in despair at the fragments that remained of the viewscreen.
Every warning alarm on the ship blared. People screamed behind him. Sections of plating from the ceiling kept hailing down from above.
None of that would matter.
Hutchins met his gaze. He nodded.
She saluted.
… And he waited. For their last second to meet them.
… A last second that didn’t come.
Just at the last moment, when the Mandalay’s structural integrity couldn’t handle the stress anymore, something happened.
Those scraps that were left of the viewscreen suddenly showed a ship slicing in from their left. At first he couldn’t believe it. At first he could barely resolve the picture over the cracked holographic viewscreen.
Just in time, a massive transport ship slammed into the hook, holding it in place.
The transport ship’s belly opened, and two huge arms sprang from it. They wrapped around the electrified cable of the hook and pulled in opposite directions.
… And it broke.
The cable actually snapped.
Captain Harvey McClane stood there in absolute amazement. Then a communication crackled over the bridge audio system.
He knew who it was long before the gravelly voice grated around the bridge. “Need a hand?” Captain Ross asked.
Though the hook was still stuck in the underside of the Mandalay, the line was no longer dragging them down to the surface of the planet.
… There was every chance the Queen had not come in time and Captain Ross’s daring rescue wouldn’t count. There was every chance that in a second, the Mandalay would fall anyway. She’d received so much damage, she had no logical reason to still be flying.
… And yet she did.
Grating alarms still blared through the room, but the ship didn’t fall from the sky.
“Too shocked to answer?” Captain Ross smiled through his words. You would have to be a fool not to note the fear playing through his tone, though. “You are alive, aren’t you, Captain McClane? Because I expect you to pay for the damages to my ship.”
“I can confirm I am alive,” Harvey managed, voice pitching wildly from his constricted throat.
“That you are. And if the Queen’s sensors are up to scratch, it looks like you’ll stay in the sky yet. You had a pretty bad beating, though, and it looks as if your internal sensors are off-line – let us help you. We’ve already connected to your engineering bay – we’ll guide you down to the ground from here.”
… He couldn’t believe it. Just as death had threatened to snatch him and his ship out of the sky, an avenging angel had swept in to save them. An angel with a gravelly voice and a dirty leather jacket, but an angel, nonetheless.
Though the offer was tempting, he couldn’t take it. Captain McClane stepped forward, hand locked on the back of his chair, and gritted his teeth. “No. We have to focus all our fire on the orb. We have to destroy it.”
“You ain’t got no fire left, and you ain’t got no luck, either,” Ross warned. “Land now before you fall out of the sky.”
“We won’t leave our duties,” Harvey said. As he said it, he saw several crewmemebrs out of the corner of his eye. Though one of them had a broken leg and the other had a gash so deep in their brow they could barely see through the blood, they still stiffened in pride.
He knew he spoke for his whole crew. “We’re here to save the galaxy, Captain Ross, and we aren’t backing down on that, even if we are wounded and bleeding.”
“Wounded and bleeding? I don’t know if you can see yourself, but your ship is literally falling apart from the outside.”
“We won’t back down. Help us. Help us to destroy the orb,” as that request rattled through Harvey’s throat, a renewed lick of determination blasted through his heart. He sprang forward and sat in his chair. It had a considerable tilt to it, and he had to lock both feet on the ground to stabilize it. Fortunately, however, the inbuilt computer panel in the armrest still functioned, and his fingers were a blur as they typed over it. In seconds he got the general condition of his ship – and it certainly was pretty dire.
… But Captain Ross was right – they were still in the air.
And Harvey was determined to keep them in the air long enough to end this.
…
Lieutenant Hunter McClane
She was heavy. Too heavy for his current fatigued form. By all rights, he shouldn’t have been able to carry her. Somehow, he was.
If he settled his mind on the task long enough, he’d probably drop her. He was like a bumblebee suddenly aware of the fact it shouldn’t be able to fly.
He kept powering forward. He had no choice.
The Prince was behind them. He… he’d turned into some kind of force. Some fearsome crackling white-black cloud.
It had the power to reach right into Hunter’s heart and stop it – to plunge a hand into the back of his brain and activate this primal fear.
Hunter knew, with 100% certainty, that whatever the Prince had turned in to shouldn’t exist.
Not in this universe.
But there was nothing they could do about it.
He kept scrounging the energy he needed to hold Ava to his chest as he moved relentlessly along the path.
She was crumpled in his arms, nothing more than a dead weight, her head tilted to the side, resting against his chest, her limbs limp.
Occasionally he stole his attention off the task of fleeing and locked it on her face. Her peaceful face. It was bruised, bloody, but her expression pulled him in.
If this ever ended – and they didn’t die – there’d be no more dancing around Priestess Ava. He’d tell her exactly how he felt. A feeling that kept growing with every second as the situation grew more and more dire.
Finally she bolted her eyes open. Such surprise filtered through her expression, he almost choked. “What is it?”
“… Another ship… another ship has swooped in to save the Mandalay.”
“What?” Hunter spat.
“Some kind of transport ship—”
“Captain Ross, you old dog,” Hunter snapped, a throaty laugh pushing through his stiff lips.
It was a single moment of mirth. It didn’t last.
Because suddenly the floor shook from below them.
He could no longer hold Ava, and both of them were thrust to the side. Just before Hunter could fall down to one knee and break it with the combined force of their weight, Ava pushed to the side, jerked a foot onto the wall, pushed back, and flipped right out of his grip.
She caught him before he could fall.
She shouldn’t have been able to do that. But maybe she too was digging deep and finding some new reserve of strength.
They tried to push up, but couldn’t – the floor kept shaking, more and more violently, the metal shrieking like a terrified child.
Suddenly something began to glow around them. Right beneath their feet, a circle of white pulsating light appeared.
“No,” Ava had time to shriek before the very floor gave way.
Before he knew what was happening, they began to fall - fast, limbs flapping around them as the floor gave way to nothing but black space.
Terror tore through him. And yet he found the strength to push a hand out, latch it over Ava’s, and lace his fingers through hers.
The blackness swarmed around them like a hive of insects. It wasn’t just darkness – a simple lack of light – it seemed to be alive, seemed to have the power to sink in and close around him like hands.
He began to choke, began to splutter.
Before he knew it was happening, Ava shoved towards him, brought her arm around, and locked it over his back. She pressed against him, torso to torso, cheek to cheek.
And… she began to glow.
She didn’t produce one of those powerful purple swords in her palm. She just… glowed.
And the light – that gentle ever-so-small light emanating over her skin – was enough to push the darkness back.
Finally he heard it once more – the shriek. The Prince.
They both landed. They thumped against something. Some kind of platform. As Ava continued to glow, her light pushed back the darkness to reveal the scene around them.
They were on some kind of circular platform in a completely pitch-black room. Or maybe they weren’t in a room. Maybe somehow they’d transported to the depths of space.
It was so dark he couldn’t tell.
As Ava’s light pushed back the night, his eyes jolted down to the floor below them. It was carved, intricate runes and patterns slicing over a shining silver surface.
They were mesmerizing, but before he could stare at the stunning detail, he heard that shriek.
The Prince was back. And this time the orb would not be able to save them.
Ava continued to glow as she pushed to her feet. Her robes hung loosely and limply around her as her head tilted forward, her eyes closed.
Eventually she opened them one after another as she stared into the darkness.
Her expression was… incredible – hardened to the point of a diamond.
He was still at her feet. He could have stayed there, succumbed to the fatigue pressing through his body, or fallen unconscious – or hell, just died.
He remained.
As she rose to her feet and her gaze cut through the darkness, it pulled him up.
He found his muscles tensing, his back stiffening, his legs pushing hard until he stood beside her, back to back.
They waited for the Prince to sweep in, for the final battle.
…
Captain Harvey McClane
It happened in a split instant. The orb changed. It went from floating there in the middle of the sky, to becoming nothing more than a pitch-black, crackling hole in space.
His body jerked back from the terrifying sight, his muscles pitching with fright. “What is that?” he spat.
There was barely anyone left standing to answer. His whole bridge had been torn apart and was nothing more than smoldering clumps of mangled consoles.
Still, Hutchins stood ramrod straight beside him, despite the fact her injuries should have seen her topple to the ground.
Harvey watched the side of her face stiffen as intense fear danced through her deep gaze. “Could it be another wormhole?”
The horrible truth was the Mandalay didn’t have the sensors left to detect whether it was or wasn’t. Yet, as Harvey stared at it, he got a sense it wasn’t.
This wasn’t some mere doorway through space.
This was a doorway through everything – a hole into the evermore.
As that exact description tumbled through his mind, he took a shaking step back.
Though he wanted to continue the fight, there was nothing he could do against that rift in reality.
There was one thing he could still do, though – make sure this ship kept flying long enough to offer help to anyone who’d need it.
He spun on his foot and started issuing orders, speaking to anyone who could still stand to help get every system back online.
Once he was done, he turned his head and stared over his stiff shoulder at the hole.
… Hunter was inside. Maybe he was alive. Maybe he wasn’t. But if he’d somehow survived whatever that was, all Harvey could do was pray his brother would pull through.
…
Lieutenant Hunter McClane
This wasn’t space. This wasn’t any realm he had any experience with. It was wholly alien to him. He’d traveled the galaxy and seen any number of strange alien worlds.
None of them came close to the sheer sense of unreality that pervaded this strange realm.
They still stood back to back, and the sense of Ava behind him was literally the only thing he could hold on to.
Her light, too. Without it, his mind and very sanity would have been claimed by the blackness clinging to the edges of Ava’s glow.
He suddenly snapped his head back as he heard that screaming, screeching hissing sound like a box full of souls being thrust open. Though Hunter didn’t believe in superstitions, there was something so uncanny, so dark about the scream, he was sure it couldn’t come from the normal realms of physical space.
It defied even the realms of the mind.
Suddenly a whooshing sound shook from above, and he tipped his head back just in time to see something loom down.
It was that crackling energy, though it was no longer white. It had been robbed of all its color and now was nothing more than a crackling, pitch-black mass. It oozed out in every direction, moving like a great intelligent body of water.
It broke around them, driving them down hard into the carved platform below. But it didn’t crush them completely. That strange heavenly glow breaking off Ava in waves was enough to push it back.
She gasped, though, locked her teeth together, and appeared to concentrate with all her will and power.
A second later, the terrible downward force of the cloud lightened, and Ava jolted back to her feet.
She turned, the scraps of her robe flaring around her knees and arms. Her face was fixed with attention, every feature locked with dedicated, single-minded determination.
He stood beside her.
That cloud of dark energy continued to break around them. It jerked around as it shot in every direction, swirling underneath the platform and breaking against its carved edges.
Ava didn’t say a word. All she did was bring her hands up.
He thought she’d create a light sword, but she didn’t. She brought her arms forward, opened her palms, and turned them face up.
There was nothing much he could do. As Ava prepared to fight that force, all he could do was stay by her side. He had no more weapons and precious little fight.
What he did have, however, was this continuous burning spark of hope that simply wouldn’t die. It was the same spark of hope that had kept him carrying Ava in the tunnels above. The same spark of hope that had seen him fight past Shera’s strength. And the exact same spark of hope that saw him stand beside Ava and face the Prince.
There was no way they’d let him win.
…
Ava
Here she was at the end. She could feel a sense of finite conclusion breaking around her. It had almost the same incredible force as the clouds of energy breaking around her like waves of a tsunami trying to split apart a bridge.
She didn’t honestly know how she found the energy to stand there with her arms up, her hands turned towards the sky, or at least where the sky should be.
Or maybe she did know where the energy came from. Her training. And more than that – the very heart of an Avixan priestess. It was a sentiment she thought she would never experience, let alone embody. She’d been the priestess to run away and shun her people, after all. But here she was at the end, embracing her roots.
That dark cloud of energy continued to jerk around the platform until finally it settled before her.
It began to condense down into a single point, like a vortex sucking everything into its center.
She could feel Hunter right beside her. There was something electrifying about his presence, something so freeing. Despite the fact they were stuck here in this impossible, terrifying space, he helped her to maintain her hope. She held on to her memories of the galaxy beyond. Visions of her home planet swamped through her consciousness, crowding out the darkness.
Finally that cloud stopped amassing. It rested there in a single point of crackling, sparking energy.
Her stomach lurched as her heart settled into a fast, hard beat.
She prepared herself just in time.
A massive wave of energy broke from the point and slashed towards her. It would have been enough to cut a cruiser’s structural shields in half. It would have been enough to slice through a mountainside.
Yet it didn’t break her. For at that moment, she called on the power of her people.
The light billowing off her and holding back the darkness wasn’t just her own. It came from her people. From the orb. From this planet.
She could instantly feel the call of the priestesses within her bones, the song of their power curling through her blood.
She understood their real task. The sacred imperative that had been given to them at the birth of their race.
It wasn’t to hold each other in check.
It was to hold back the Force – the very power at the center of the crackling mass before her, the very force trying desperately to find some crack in reality to push its way into this universe.
The very force she would hold back today.
If she lost, it would make her open the seal. If she won, the Prince would be killed and the Force repulsed. For now.
She felt Hunter step towards her and place a hand on her shoulder and another beneath one of her upturned hands.
… She would never be able to tell him how much that simple move meant to her in that moment.
It gave her the strength to do what she had to do next.
Again the crackling mass sent another burst of power shooting towards her. She didn’t duck, even though it was directed straight at her neck. She forced all of her attention and energy into keeping her hands aloft and maintaining her connection to her people and the orb.
That crackling point of power kept assaulting them, throwing blast after blast of power their way.
But she pushed them back. As long as she kept her light burning bright, it would not be able to win. The second she let it flicker, they would both be blown out.
From far off at the edges of this strange realm, she began to hear an odd throaty, husky noise. It took her a moment to realize it was a laugh. It sounded muffled as if someone had a blanket shoved against their mouth or a gag in place around their lips.
Then it grew louder, more distinct.
Then she felt it right behind her ear.
Though her eyes bolted wide and a terrified shiver shot down her back, she didn’t turn.
She felt the Prince’s presence right behind her. “Give up, priestess,” he hissed.
Though his voice was undoubtedly there, he wasn’t. She didn’t need to break her precious concentration to check that. She simply knew it.
He was nothing more than a distraction, a ploy by the Force to make her lose her concentration.
“Give up, priestess, and I will tell you everything you want to know about your people, about the Coalition, about the true history of the Milky Way. Give up, priestess, and you won’t have to keep fighting anymore. Give in to the fatigue I know winds around your bones,” his voice dipped low, shook right through her stomach.
There was such a powerful, unsettling edge to it that it would have been all too easy to snap her head around to check if he was there. If that madman’s leering face was right behind her own.
She felt Hunter’s hand tighten harder around her shoulder, felt the hand that cupped her own lace around her fingers.
He anchored her, gave her the concentration she needed to keep staring that black point right in its proverbial eye.
“Don’t you want to know where your people really came from? Who created them?” his tone became truly menacing on the word who. It shook with such dark power it felt just as lethal as one of those blasts of power continuously issuing from the crackling point.
… Questions danced in her mind. Though she tried as hard as she could to force them back – to keep every scrap of her attention locked on the point – it was hard.
Almost impossible.
“Your race doesn’t come from this galaxy, priestess, doesn’t even come from this universe,” he hissed.
…. She almost fell. If it weren’t for Hunter’s reassuring grip around her hands, she would have.
Maybe Hunter couldn’t hear the Prince, or maybe Hunter had the determination necessary to ignore him.
She… she couldn’t stop herself from shivering all over at his statement.
“You come from the realm between realities. Your people were guards. Tireless soldiers sent to patrol the between realms.”
She clenched her teeth as a cold sick sensation pushed through her gut. It was so nauseating and all-encompassing, she felt she was seconds from losing consciousness.
But she held on.
“You were brought here by them. The angels,” he hissed.
Angels.
That word… that word did something to her. For the briefest second, it opened a door to somewhere. A memory. A past. The history of her people. She saw flashes of some strange dark realm just like this that existed at the far reaches of time and space. Not just at the reaches of this universe, but in the space between all universes.
“Your people were brought here after the last time the Force tried to push through. You were meant to be guards. You were meant to retain your memories and your full power. You were meant to peacefully, quietly watch over the Milky Way. You were meant to stop all forms of the Force from finding cracks in this reality and pushing through. But you were corrupted.”
Corrupted.
She took an enormous breath that almost felt as if it shattered her lungs.
“You lost your true power, your true purpose. And now you are nothing more than toys,” a vicious note split through the Prince’s voice with such power it was like being slapped across her face.
She couldn’t fight it any longer, and it distracted her.
Instantly a blast of power slammed from the crackling point and sliced across her chest.
It wasn’t enough to split her in half, but it still rang through her body with such crippling force she was sure she would die.
A final terrifying scream tore from her throat and echoed through the void.
Hunter screamed her name, pressed forward, caught her, held her – but it didn’t matter.
Horror consumed her from the inside out.
Horror… and a last dying flicker of something. Of courage. Of a courage beyond her mere life. Of a courage that spanned the universe, that spanned the history of her people.
Just as the crackle of power sent a fatal blast of energy shooting towards her – and just as the Prince let one final sadistic laugh split from his lips – she held on.
It wasn’t just Hunter’s body crumpled around hers in his valiant attempt to save her.
It wasn’t just her training, her newfound connection to her people, her connection to the orb. It was her. Not the priestess, not the ensign. Not the Avixan.
Her.
She didn’t want to die.
And she couldn’t let Hunter die, either.
So, just in her last moment, when things seemed darkest, she found the only spark of light that could never truly be extinguished. The center of her own soul.
She clutched hold of it and wielded it like a sword.
And a sword it formed.
Just as she found her balance, just as she broke free of Hunter’s embrace, two bright white-purple swords formed in her grip. She brought them forward and parried the Force’s attack.
The Prince began to scream. It was too late for him – again he had fatally underestimated her.
Now she could not lose.
She burned brighter than she had before, the light eddying off her like the center of a star.
This – this was the true power of her people. A people who’d been tasked from time immemorial to keep back the Force.
She thrust forward, leaping high into the air, bringing both blades around.
She felt this strange realm shudder in abject fear.
She bellowed and brought her swords down, right into the heart of the point.
At first it did nothing.
Then there was a crack - far off at the edge of hearing, so distant it was practically indiscernible.
Something screamed. Many things screamed. Many things that did not belong in this universe and never would.
They latched their ethereal hands on her blades and tried to push her swords from the crack in space.
It wouldn’t work. She just pushed harder and harder, using all her strength as she drove that light harder into the darkness.
In another second, there was one final ear-splitting scream. It shot out of the crack and echoed in a near-endless loop.
Then it imploded.
The crack swallowed itself.
She landed back on the carved platform.
Her body was still wired on the true power that pulsed through it. But her connection to her power – to her true origins – couldn’t last.
It ebbed.
She had time to turn and stare at Hunter one final time before she fell.
It was over. They’d done it.
…
Lieutenant Hunter McClane
Ava fell into his arms. Though her eyes were still open, it was clear she couldn’t move her body.
She’d used up everything in her fight. And yet she still had the presence of mind to crack her trembling lips open.
He bent over her, knees driving down into the carved floor as he struggled to hear what she was whispering.
“… We only have seconds.”
Terror ripped through his heart. So this was how it was going to end? It seemed so unfair – a universal injustice – to come this far and face so much only to die like this.
He cradled her, wrapped his arms all the way around her back, and drew her as close as he could. The skin along his neck was still blistered and bloody from where the Prince’s blade had sliced across it. His chest was still covered in bruises, a few ribs cracked.
None of that mattered. He crumpled over her, drawing his face close to hers, wanting to see her before the end.
… Ava suddenly sucked in a jolting breath. He watched her eyes spring wide open and saw her luminescent pupils burn with a new light.
… She was connecting to the orb again.
“… Hu … Hunter… hold on to my hand – keep me awake, keep me awake… I can… I can connect to the orb. I can use its… transporters to get us… out of here,” she managed through stuttering breaths.
His eyes bulged wide as he realized what she was saying.
He didn’t hold her hand. He did the one thing his heart had been yearning for since they’d come here.
He leaned forward, pressed his trembling white lips against her forehead, and kissed her.
Though her eyes had been threatening to close in weakness, suddenly they opened wide.
Her cheeks even flushed as she looked right up at him.
“You awake?” he croaked.
“… Hunter?”
“Now get us out of here, priestess. I know you can do it.” He crumpled his bruised cheeks down into a smile and looked only at her.
She stared up at him with a flicker of vulnerability, of yearning.
Instinctively, he bent over and kissed her once more. “You can do it.”
And she did.
From somewhere, he heard the whir of energy building up.
Then a light.
A brilliant, brilliant light shot down from above. It cut through the darkness like a sword slicing through a stone.
It surrounded them, lifting them up off the broken carved floor. They floated there, enshrouded by its unrivaled brilliance. Then they were transported away.
They didn’t arrive back inside the orb, but rather on the bridge of the Mandalay.
Harvey bolted from his mangled command seat to see Hunter appear right before him.
“Hunter?” Harvey barked.
The bridge was in disarray. Hunter had never seen it in a worse state. It looked like several bombs had gone off.
Ava groaned in his arms, her head shifting restlessly against his chest.
Harvey looked down, panic playing in his gaze. “What’s going on?”
“We… Ava defeated the Prince. And the Force. Look, it’s too hard to explain. But we have to get out of here now—”
“… No,” Ava suddenly managed. She couldn’t pull her head away from Hunter’s chest and rather spoke against it, every word a hushed breath of warmth against his torso. “Stay here… I can… I can open a door.”
“Door?” Harvey asked in a rushed breath.
“A wormhole,” she explained in a hushed tone.
Hunter jerked his head up and fixed it on the broken remnants of the viewscreen.
Just in time.
The orb had reappeared, but it was broken, bleeding almost. Massive chunks of metal kept falling off its sides and spiraling down to the ocean far, far below.
“If you’re talking about a wormhole to take us back to the Coalition, Ava, the Mandalay won’t be able to survive. We can barely keep aloft as it is—” Harvey began.
“… It’ll work,” she said softly, still not moving her face from Hunter’s chest.
Her whole body tensed as she appeared to concentrate once more.
Harvey protested, but it appeared Ava didn’t listen.
The whole orb began to glow, and what was left of the Mandalay’s sensors started to go wild.
“We’re picking up a growing spatial distortion right above the Mandalay,” a tactician snapped. “The Queen’s moving to intercept,” the guy’s voice rose in shock and gratitude.
“Tell them to get out of here,” Harvey began.
He didn’t get the chance to finish his statement.
Suddenly a huge shudder passed through the bridge, shaking everyone where they stood. It wasn’t violent enough that it pushed people to their knees. But it was close.
It didn’t last, however. In another second, something loomed beyond the viewscreen.
A slice of light.
Before anyone could do anything, it shifted forward and swallowed the Queen and the Mandalay.
Hunter crumpled over Ava instinctively, trying to use what was left of his body to protect hers.
He needn’t have bothered.
The Mandalay didn’t so much as shake as it was flung through the strange wormhole. It was less of a stable rip through space, and more like a door.
One that opened before them and led right out into Coalition space.
A second later, they appeared right in front of Earth.
That unmistakable blue and green planet bobbed on the screen before them.
A few alarms blared through the bridge, but the Mandalay didn’t fall.
She stood.
Ava didn’t. He felt her crumple, finally succumb to her fatigue, and lose consciousness.
Just before she did, her lips parted and they brushed against his chest. “It’s over now. The lost star’s been destroyed. It won’t come back again.”
Hunter sat there and cradled Ava as all hell broke loose on the Mandalay’s bridge. Or maybe it wasn’t hell. It was blessed relief.
They were back in the Coalition, back near planet Earth, and well within reach of the relief they so desperately needed.
Hunter sat there, cradling Ava, letting Harvey and his crew do what they did best.
Hunter fondly brushed the hair from Ava’s face as the gentle pulse of her breathing pushed her chest against his.
It didn’t take long for the Earth Defense Fleet to start sending forces to help them.
At one point, Captain Ross got on the line. “I guess this is where me and my crew get dragged back to prison,” he observed.
“Not going to happen,” Harvey barked as he flicked a line of sweaty, blood-caked fringe from his brow but nonetheless offered the view of Captain Ross on the screen a direct smile. “You saved us, Captain, and we will do everything we can to get you and your crew exonerated. We can even arrange transport for you back into the Barbarian sector if that’s where you want to go.”
Ross paused. Hunter knew exactly what he was thinking. Though Hunter hadn’t known Ross all that long, the breakneck weeks they’d spent together were enough.
He knew exactly what Ross wanted. He’d just need a little encouragement.
Hunter cleared his throat, finally tugging his attention off Ava. “You know, I hear they’re in need of ballsy, disciplined, competent freighter captains out in the Forgoza Expanse. Not too many willing to take on the gravitational eddies and pirate attacks out there. Pays well. And, of course, it buys you a hell of a lot of respect in the space bars. Technically in Coalition space, but that doesn’t make it safe.”
Ross paused. Then he laughed, showing all his teeth. “Well, now, I’m not sure if I know a ballsy captain brilliant enough for such a dangerous but rewarding task.”
“Oh, I reckon you’ll find one,” Hunter managed.
From behind Hunter, the lifts beeped, and medical personnel finally swarmed onto the bridge.
Harvey instructed them to deal with Ava and Hunter first.
Hunter insisted on standing and walking himself to the lift. He paused just before he walked inside and locked his attention on his brother.
Both Harvey and Hunter McClane bowed low to each other. It was long, it was respectful, and it meant the world to Hunter. It was the kind of mutual acknowledgment he’d been searching for for years.
Because Hunter – he’d now found everything he was looking for.
He deliberately sliced his gaze back to Ava as she was carried away.
…
Lieutenant Hunter McClane
It was well and truly over. It had been almost three days since the incident, and Ava was back on her feet.
He’d been looking through half the Academy to find her.
There she was.
He strode up to her as she stood facing the view. She looked resplendent with her red hair and luminescent eyes. He had no idea how he’d ever thought they didn’t match her.
He walked right up to her, his hands tucked neatly behind his back.
Her gaze flashed towards him, a smile instantly curling her lips. Her cute nose scrunched as she appeared to notice the expression crumpling his mouth. “You look happy to see someone, Lieutenant McClane.”
“I guess you could say that,” he agreed, finding it completely impossible to tug that manic smile from his lips. “You could say I’m thanking every star in the Milky Way that I’m alive right now, that we all pulled through this, and that you, Ensign Ava—” he turned to her and deliberately let his gaze lock on her hair before it slid to her mouth, “are here with me.”
“Are you saying this as a lieutenant?” She tilted her head to the side and raised an eyebrow.
He laughed, incapable of holding his hands behind his back any longer. They swung by his sides, his fingers alive with quick tingles, the same flighty charges that sprang through his gut, rose through his chest, and powered through every millimeter of his jaw.
They were the kind of tingles you couldn’t ignore.
They were alone in the corridor. It was a quiet morning at the Academy. After the crazy events of the last few weeks, they deserved quiet.
It had been a miracle that had enabled them to prevail over the Force and limp through a wormhole back to Coalition space.
Now they were both here. Alive. Safe. Sure, the Coalition was going to grill them senseless over what happened.
That could wait.
He looked right into Ava’s eyes. The determination that swelled in his heart – to push forward and take advantage of this empty corridor and kiss her – it suddenly hit a snag.
Sure, they’d been through a lot – more than most would ever go through in their entire careers. But maybe that wasn’t enough. Maybe Ava—
Perhaps Ava could see the indecision playing in his gaze, maybe even hear it as it muffled the once wild beat of his heart.
She considered him for a single second. Then her lips opened. “I’m going to kiss you, Lieutenant. Are you alright with that?”
Wow. There you go.
He’d always been wrong about Ava. He’d always thought she was weak, reserved, withdrawn.
She was none of those things.
Nor was she the kind to hesitate. As his lips parted and he gave a happy, relieved laugh, she took a determined step towards him, coming to rest right in front of Hunter.
She looked up.
He stopped laughing as an electric jolt shot through his heart.
They both shifted forward and kissed.
He couldn’t say it was the most passionate kiss of his life. That would come.
What it was, was the most deserved moment of intimacy he’d ever had. This breakneck, wild journey had thrown them across the galaxy, had pitted them against Barbarian slave traders and forces from beyond the universe.
It had split them apart on so many occasions.
And now, finally, it was bringing them together.
She leaned into him, pushing up to her tiptoes, one hand resting on his shoulder and sliding down until her thumb and fingers anchored around his arm.
His hand pressed into the back of her neck, her fingers alive with a sense of touch, warmth, and hope. He picked up every detail of the nape of her neck, of the curl of her back, of the warm, blessed press of her lips.
He picked up every detail and held them close, but not as close as he held her.
One journey was over. Another was about to begin….
…
Ava
She would never be the same again. She didn’t want to be the same. She’d learned too much and come too far.
She’d joined the Academy to get away. In doing so, she’d been thrust into the greatest adventure of her life.
As she lay beside Hunter, staring through the window at the dawn breaking over the city, she smiled.
There was still a lot she had to sort out. Her world had to be rebuilt. A task which would be easier now the Coalition had pushed into Avixan space and stopped the civil war.
Yet though the fighting had stopped, it would take time to heal. And she knew she would have to be there to help her people.
She slipped her hand out from under the covers and slowly stared at each of her fingers in turn.
… She’d experienced the true power of her people when she’d fought the Force. Their true destiny. And she knew that when she brought news of this to her people – of their real duty within the Milky Way – it would heal their broken culture. They weren’t devils, weren’t monsters. They were angels led astray. And with guidance, they could be led back to the light.
Hunter stirred beside her, opening one eye and fixing it on her. He saw her hand, wriggled his own out from under the covers, and placed his warm fingers on her wrist.
He drew her hand back down. “Tomorrow,” he whispered. “We’ll head to Avixa tomorrow.”
She tilted her head and smiled at him.
He was coming with her. For Hunter McClane was determined never to leave her side again.
She pushed her hand out from under his and let her fingers trail down his closed eye and along his jaw.
It would be hard to bring her people back into the light. She would have to wake up the rest of the priestesses and teach them all about their real destiny. She would also have to help guide the Coalition, teaching them everything they needed to know about the Force.
She would do all those things.
Tomorrow.
Right now, she settled back into the covers next to Hunter.
…
Admiral Forest
Admiral Forest sat in the dark, considering the object that had been left over from the lost star. It had dropped off the priestess – Ava – when she’d been transported aboard the Mandalay. No one had any idea where it came from. Both Hunter McClane and Ava stated they’d never seen it before.
Admiral Forest’s head was propped up on her hands, her jaw sitting hard against her curled-up knuckles.
The only illumination in her office came from the small hovering light that now shifted close to the device on her desk.
She considered it in silence, a growing unease spreading through her gut as her eyes locked on the smooth apparently nondescript disc of metal.
Her best scientists had analyzed it, but as of yet had come up blank. They had no idea what it was, but that could not shift the certainty she held that it was important. That it held the key.
The Force was coming. There was now no more doubting that. Soon it would rear its head from beyond this universe and force its way into the Milky Way.
If the Coalition could not pull together, could not find the resources to fight back, then all would be lost and all would die.
As that certainty rang through her mind with all the clarity of a clarion call, she finally pitched forwards, swept her hand across her desk, and plucked up the disc.
It wasn’t dangerous, or at least that’s what they’d promised her. Yet as her fingers pushed against that smooth silver metal, she felt something.
Perhaps it was nerves, a vestige of fatigue racing down her back. It plunged right from the center of her heart down into her middle. As soon as it struck her gut, it shifted, exploding, pushing through every single cell.
She jerked back, took a gasp that echoed around her silent room… but then nothing. She didn’t speak, didn’t scream, didn’t suddenly slam a hand on a computer panel and demand security get in here at once.
Instead, the admiral’s body appeared to relax. She felt a cold kind of reassuring calm sink through her muscles as if she’d just been administered an anesthetic. There, in the center of her mind, in the most disciplined corner of her soul, she rallied against the feeling, realizing it was wrong. But her rally could not shove back the sensation.
She found herself pushing forward in her chair, found her hands clutching at the device so tightly it would have taken a team of security guards to pry it from her desperate fingers.
She brought it as close as she could to her face until her nose practically brushed up against the smooth metal. She felt her eyes almost bulge from her skull, felt her gaze lock on that disc with all the force of magnetic clamps locking a heavy cruiser in place. Her lips cracked open, that last vestige of reason pushing back against the cold numbness claiming her body. “What, what are you?” she managed.
“Help,” the device spoke from nowhere yet from somewhere. That single word issued around her office and sank deep, deep into her brain. “Help. We are here to help you.”
Before the admiral knew what she was doing, she clutched her fingers on her collar and pulled her top-down. She grabbed the disc, pushed it down her top, and locked it over the middle of her chest. Then, with a dead gaze, she let her hands drop, her arms resting loosely by her sides.
Admiral Forest twisted in her seat, stood, and walked towards the door.
Thank you for reading The Lost Star.
If you liked this series, you might also like Fractured Mind – the next installment in the Galactic Coalition Academy series. Read on for an excerpt from the first chapter.