Chapter Thirty-Four

“Balykkal? Dagger? Please tell me you have something useful for me,” Edie begged.

“Got ’em,” Ari crowed. “They’ve accessed and overridden planetary teleport platforms. Ops, shut them down and do it now.”

“They’re teleporting in all over station,” Captain Xiao said, confirming Edie’s fear. “Main force assembling on the command deck.”

“They’ll try for environmental control,” V’kyrri warned.

“We’re on it,” Damen Sindrivik replied.

“Balykkal, do you have a count?” Edie asked.

“Sixty,” Xiao replied, “and counting. Team of ten in the habitat core between the docks and you.”

“Dock team, did you get that?”

An anomalous audio-turned-visual signal seared Edie’s retinas. It resolved to words on her screen.

“All parties. All parties,” Admiral Seaghdh bellowed. “Dwyr Balen is taking fire. Repeat. The queen’s shuttle is under attack.”

Pandemonium erupted on her SEM. Too-fast-to-read symbols of jumbled together concepts flashed past. The system gave up tagging speakers. Edie caught demands for status. Then for ident. Orders to scramble fighters. Get ships into position to return fire. Teleport Her Majesty out. Belays on that order because all the teleport systems in reach were shedding excess heat and couldn’t teleport.

Edie craned her neck, scanning the black beyond the dome and caught a distant, brief flash of a weapon impacting shields. She took a single step toward it. What the Three Hells kind of trap had they walked into?

Teleport distortion swept her again. More attackers, teleporting into the middle of the pod. As far as she could tell, they hadn’t risked ’porting near the dome where the protective force fields would distort the teleport. Balykkal had teleported her troops into the dead center of the pod for that very reason. She passed swift signs to Raz and her team. They picked it up, flashing the “concentrate fire, center” message.

Resistance fighters sprinted for the edges of the pod. Edie ran, one eye on the dim star that was Eilod’s shuttle reflecting sunlight. Pulse thumping inside her ears, she fired at the attackers ’porting into the pod.

“Captain Idylle,” an unknown voice interjected. “Planetary forces are mobilizing to secure planet-side teleport locations.”

Edie cringed. Planetary forces? That would be whatever tiny fragment of the military that wasn’t supporting the vaccination drive. And civilians ulcerating for some way to get their own back, whether against the Chekydran-hiin, the plague, or the former governor. The revolution had begun. Even if it was in support of the Claugh for the time being.

If it stopped Gliwt’s entire command from teleporting into the station for her to have to chase down, all the better. She cast a look at the flare and gleam of Eilod’s shuttle drawing nearer. Setting her teeth, she forced herself to look away. She couldn’t do anything. Not for Eilod. But she could and should clear the route for the Chekydran delegates.

“Acknowledged. Fighters scrambling. First wave to Her Majesty’s location in five. Do you copy Dwyr Balen? Keep it together for just another few minutes,” Ari hollered.

“Acknowledged, Dagger. They won’t get through,” the shuttle pilot said. “Lunar station, lunar station, be advised that Her Majesty’s transport will be coming in hot.”

Edie snorted, but no relief cooled the heat clutching her chest. They weren’t in the clear by any means.

“Jonas. Gallena. With me,” Edie signed over her head as she ran for the emergency airlock. Troops closed around her, blood on clothes, some belonging to wearers, some not. A few limped or clutched at injury. Every single one scanned the open fields, weapons trained.

“Ambush between the docks and here,” she said. “Delegates on the way. No response from dock team.”

Jonas’s features tightened. Gallena shifted her pulse rifle higher.

Edie shot a glance at Jonas. He lifted a brow in question.

“They knew,” she said with her hands.

Jonas didn’t ask about what. “About reviving the resistance? Your captain?”

Sighing, she lifted one shoulder, let it fall.

“It was predictable, right down to Gallena being the one to broach the subject,” he said.

Edie gave up trying to tread water in her inadequacies. “Not to me.”

He patted her shoulder. “Of course not. You’re the epicenter of the storm. Be yourself, Firestorm, and let’s make this mess messier.”

The audio visualization on Edie’s SEM climbed. Across from her, the main airlock opened.

People poured through at a dead run. Judging by the data the SEM sliced into Edie’s skull, they were yelling. Maybe screaming.

Three seconds later, four Chekydran-ki swarmed through the hatch. Folded wings opened as they emerged from the airlock. The two leading Ki, smaller than the pair Edie recognized as the queen and her drone, launched into the air in pursuit of the fleeing humanoids.

Edie’s nerves prickled anticipation.

V’kyrri.

Her pulse picked up speed.

Resistance fighters, V’kyrri in their midst, spilled through the airlock.

Weapons flashed to life, focused on the soldiers running from Chekydran. From across the pod, V’kyrri waved an arm overhead.

“Path from dock to pod clear,” he said aloud.

So much for the ambush. The Chekydran-ki had driven them into the resistance’s make-shift ambush. One more point for their side.

Edie shot a glance to the spot she’d last seen Eilod’s shuttle. It wasn’t there. Her Majesty’s pilots had brought the shuttle much closer to station. Close enough that Edie could detect the attacking fighters.

“They’re ours,” Edie breathed. When she managed to pull air into her lungs, she bellowed, “Do you copy? Attackers are Nol Jakze interplanetary fighters.”

Her team, Jonas, Gallena, Povora and the others stared, weapons going slack.

“Kartz.” Whatever communicated from Admiral Seaghdh’s single word through Edie’s SEM, it dumped ice down her back and left her shivering.

“How the Three Hells did they access those fighters?” V’kyrri yelled. “You killed their codes.”

“Fine question,” Captain Idylle snapped.

“Captain,” an unknown voice said. “Ships leaving atmosphere.”

A stream of fire appeared against the black backdrop of space.

“Chekydran-hiin, Captain.”

“Where are they coming from?” Ari bellowed. “Where? Mothership or planet side?”

Claugh short-range fighters swept into Edie’s line of sight, peppering the Nol Jakze forces attacking Eilod’s shuttle.

Edie ached for t’Achreides-myn. Her little boat would make short work of straightening out the nonsense. Course, it might also puncture a dome on station and murder everyone.

She frowned and pressed the heel of one hand against her aching sternum. Vibration settled deep inside, intensifying, mounting pressure upon pressure. Enough to make her bones ache. She gasped, head spinning. She’d been here before. Recognition burst inside her skull.

“Hiin on the platform. All parties. Chekydran-hiin attacking the platform,” Edie yelled. Ferocity exploded into her chest. “Guard the Ki. Guard the Ki queen and her drone.”

Resistance fighters converged on the gleaming black queen and her drone. The pair rose to their full height, wings outstretched.

“All personnel to high alert. Get your shields up. We’ve got a Hiin mother ship in orbit somewhere,” Ari said. “Camouflaged. Maybe hiding behind the moon. It’s the only way they could get on the platform this fast.”

“Balykkal. Initiating scans.”

“The Ki confirm the advisory, Captain, and are moving to investigate.”

The pressure in Edie’s chest increased. Jonas, Gallena, and Povora closed ranks with her. She shot a glance at the dome and stumbled. Eilod’s shuttle had drawn much closer. Single occupant fighters arced back and forth, strafing. The Nol Jakze fighters had taken hits. Their number had dwindled. The Claugh fighters had suffered no losses that she could see.

Good in that the Claugh were successfully defending their queen.

Bad in that the Nol Jakzian fighters weren’t fighting back in favor of attacking the shuttle. Edie shook her hum-muddled head. “V’kyrri.”

“Edie?”

“Nol Jakzian fighters can’t hurt the shuttle. Why are they attacking?” Jolted like she’d fallen off the bottom step of porch stairs at her parents’ house, she gasped. “Get that shuttle docked,” Edie screamed. “Get it docked. The attack is a delaying tactic.”

“Chekydran,” V’kyrri snarled both in her head and aloud. Her SEM didn’t sync with his internal voice. The mismatch gave her a headache.

“Get me weapons,” Ari Idylle commanded, her audio signature a flat line on Edie’s SEM.

Behind Edie, the emergency airlock exploded into the pod. A fist of a pressure wave slammed Edie. She landed face first in the dirt before she could register the need to catch herself. Spitting bitter soil, she rolled.

Chekydran-hiin, tentacles waving weapons, shoved one at a time through the airlock opening. Right on top of her and her cell. She jammed down the trigger of her gun.

“Bugs,” Jonas shouted aloud. He grabbed Edie under the arms and hauled her backward as she sprayed the creatures emerging from the air lock.

“The Hiin have engaged Her Majesty’s shuttle,” Seaghdh said.

Gallena took up suppression fire.

Jonas hauled Edie upright.

“Scatter,” Povora yell-signed.

There was nowhere to scatter to. Running zigzags, people took off in every direction. The Hiin hesitated in stomping over their own dead and dying, eye stalks swiveling as if surveying the lay of the land as well as the opposition.

“Edie.” V’kyrri yelped inside the confines of her skull. “RUN.”

The Chekydran-hiin turned en masse to stare at Edie. Her SEM erupted with data as if the Hiin relied on echo location to figure her out. She backpedaled, spun, and pelted for the center of the dome. Weapons fire salted the earth around her, lifting the hair on her arms.

“New contact,” someone from either the Dagger or the Balykkal called.

A shot clipped her. Shrieking as every nerve screamed fire, she went down hard.

“Edie,” V’kyrri’s bellow resounded in her head.

She slid a meter. A blow and sting to her ankle jerked her into a fetal position. She spotted the source of her pain. Bug. Trying to grab her.

She shot it in what passed for a face. It collapsed, spraying dirt into the air. A ship soared out of the dust pall, arcing over the dome. Weapons hot. Recognition thumped Edie in the chest.

Trente.

Another Chekydran-hiin rushed her. Sobbing for breath, she shot it, too. Fear wrenched her to unsteady feet. Edie staggered, snarling and lobbing fire over her shoulder. The butt of her pistol grew hot.

“Shields buckling,” caught her eye in the script rolling past on her SEM.

Ice filled Edie’s veins. Another tentacle slapped beside her.

Edie ran.

Bugs cantered on her tail. Her pulse synced to the beat of their legs impacting soil. She had nowhere to run. No means of escape. She flashed back to fifteen years ago. She’d been a child pursued by a madman in a Claugh uniform—the madman who’d forced her to murder her parents. That day of running, her legs screaming, her lungs bursting, she’d been driven to become what she’d loathed in the Claugh. A monster. Long suppressed wounds in her psyche cracked, bleeding memory and panic into her system. Now it was Chekydran. Only she wasn’t a child. Edie was the monster she’d been made.

With shaking hands, she loosed an explosive from her belt. It fell into the soil. She urged her aching body to go faster.

3, 2, 1.

POP.

SEM data stilled for a moment, then ragged, high-frequency data spikes lit up her visual field. For several seconds, the pattern of bug legs running, broke. When it resumed, a bug galloped up on her from the side. She half turned to deal with it. One of the bugs at her back wrapped a tentacle around her chest. It shook her. Edie lost her pistol.

The Chekydran jerked as if it had been stung. Eyestalks swiveled away from her. Pain wrapped her ribs. She couldn’t breathe. Kicking the tentacle squeezing her did nothing. Eyesight hazing, she clutched for her tool belt. Then she arced through the air.

“Oof.” Edie hit the dirt and slid. Her SEM glasses dislodged. It was all she knew for certain while her system registered and cataloged injuries and struggled to suck breath into achy lungs.

“Edie.”

Sparks infused her blood. V’kyrri levered her upright and shoved lenses into her limp hands. He crouched, propping her against his body, lifted a rifle and fired into the oncoming ranks of Chekydran-hiin.

Color burst across her sight and the message seeped from V’kyrri into Edie. The Hiin were afraid of him. The Chekydran-ki wanted him off platform. They wanted—no—they needed him safe. Edie frowned, looked over her shoulder at the queen and her drone standing behind V’kyrri, their hind legs sawing their wings. Forcing lethargy away, Edie shoved the SEM to her face, and registered the vibration produced by the Ki. It rose and fell in soothing, rhythmic arcs.

Resistance fighters, bloody but upright, advanced, firing.

The number of Hiin didn’t diminish.

At least Gliwt’s troops had stopped teleporting.

“CLEAR,” Edie sign-shouted. She threw a seeker. The metallic object hit the dirt halfway between her and the leading edge of Hiin where it rocked back and forth for a split second. Then it whirred to life and rushed the front line.

The bugs dove apart.

The bomb blew. A burst of static on the SEM. Ichor and chitin spattered the ground.

“Get her out,” Seaghdh bellowed over the open channel. His terror and rage split Edie’s skull through the SEM. “EILOD!”

The shuttle exploded.