YO’QILUVCHI, ROHILEK HIGH ORBIT, KURU SYSTEM
Deafening claxons rang through the ship.
Eying the groaning pipes overhead, Marco went still, dragging in what few scents hung in the sanitized air. His head ached from the strain of pulling in empty draughts—empty save Eija’s. Her panic shot out to him. “She’s in trouble.” On his feet, he moved to the static barrier.
Jadon jumped to his side, punched the barrier, earning a powerful rebuke from the ship.
Between the shrieks of the claxon came bellows. Sparks flew in the brig corridors.
Weaponless, he and Jadon were trapped and useless, yet they needed to capitalize on the chaos. “We have to do something,” Marco yelled over the din.
“Like what?”
There had to be a way to get free. Even if they did, whatever was happening out there would not be good for them. They’d have no way to defend themselves. But staying here . . .
He anak’d a stirring in the sanitized air. “Back! One’s coming.”
“How do we take them down?” Jadon hissed, backing into a corner. “They have every advantage.”
“Except size.”
“Did you miss the part where they’re nearly twice as big, twice as strong, and have cannons for arms?”
“Did you miss that dreadnoughts are enormous? They can’t turn on a data disc?”
Jadon’s expression smoothed in understanding, slowly prying a smile from the guy.
“Make him angry.” Marco crammed his shoulders against the hull.
“You sure this isn’t your way of getting me out of the way?”
“Trust.”
“Says the guy who’s going to hide in the corner and not have a pulse cannon aimed at his chest,” Jadon muttered. And just as quick, he started shouting, raising his arms, and challenging the beasts who must be in view now.
The static barrier popped off and a Draegis swarmed in, trilling something neither of them understood. But they did understand the retracting arm and heat wake pluming around it.
“Any time now,” Jadon hissed at Marco.
Slamming forward, Marco drove his entire weight into the arm and shoved it upward just as it fired. Heat seared the side of his face as the blast caught the beast’s head.
Flesh, blood, and goo erupted with a definitive splat.
Cringing, Marco hiked backward. To keep the barrier from zapping on again, he forced the beast’s now-limp bulk across the threshold. It hit with a thud that rattled the deck. Dark ooze spilled out into the corridor.
“Ready?” Marco glanced back at Jadon—and flinched. The guy stood motionless, coated in the biomatter of the now-dead Draegis. It took everything in him not to laugh. “You good?”
Jadon glowered, raking a hand down his face to clear the slimier chunks. “Next time, I hide in the corner.”
Marco sniggered as he started into the passage. “Let’s go.”
A swirling of air pushed him back, right into Jadon. Two Lavabeasts barreled past the brig juncture, arms weaponized, completely missing them. Once safe, Marco skirted the bulkhead, making his way along the curving juncture. He caught the girl’s scent to the right. Almost as he thought it, one of the walls became a door—at the same time his brand lit with a thrumming fire. Startled, he glanced down, then to the panel—a narrow door—that slid aside. What . . .?
Unnerving. Didn’t like that. But he wouldn’t complain now that this black mark on his life was finally serving him. Sparks glittered into the passage, searing his nostrils. He stumbled through the opening, Jadon at his back.
“Want to explain how you opened that panel?”
“Nope.” Had his brand done it? He didn’t know.
“Figures.”
A frenzied Eija slid around a corner. Wide brown eyes struck them as she sputtered to gain traction. Behind her, Blue was moving backward, his weaponized arm firing. She shouted, but claxons swallowed her words.
Marco anak’d her scent—trouble. A lot of it.
She caught his arm and pulled him toward Blue and an open passage. The same one receiving live fire.
He resisted.
She rose on tiptoe and put her mouth to his ear. “This way!” Her shout came dimly amid the grating noise. “Stay behind me.”
Right. He was a hunter, a warrior, and she wanted him behind her? But he had no chance to argue—she sprinted away with Blue. They made a dozen turns and maneuvers, Marco just as lost as the Draegis apparently were.
Blue rotated to a bulkhead, palmed it, and a upper panel swung open. He withdrew small phase pistols and passed them out.
Though Marco felt better with a weapon in hand, it was a false sense of security. They were in a Draegis dreadnought with a complement of well over thirty thousand beasts. All with weaponized arms. And he had—he glanced at the small phase pistol—what amounted to a water gun.
Curse the reek!
Eija yanked Marco forward as Blue shoved Jadon. His chortle could be heard over the pistols and the tinny whine of weapon-arms and claxons. In a queue, they advanced down the passage. Unhindered for what felt like an eternity, they scrambled down a ladder to a lower deck, moving quickly through the shadows, avoiding clusters of Draegis running in the opposite direction.
Spotting two Lavabeasts at the other end of the passage that looked less steel military ship and more posh luxury hotel, Marco jerked her back. “No!” When she tried to wrest free, he swept around to protect her. She was clearly important to the beasts, and it’d be handy to have a Draegis on their side if they got off this ship.
She grabbed his face, her eyes uncannily ablaze. Not brown. Not even caramel, but this fierce, pale color he couldn’t even name. “Trust me!”
Shamed—hadn’t he told Jadon to do that very thing?—he swallowed. “You’ll get killed!”
“Maybe,” she said. “But I doubt it.”
As if to prove her words, shots pierced the sterility of the ship yet completely avoided her. Jadon yelped, clapping a hand over his shoulder, where an angry red welt manifested.
Blue bellowed and gave another shove, through a narrow service corridor and out into the next luxury passageway—officers’ quarters?
They wound through the maze, Eija in the lead, occasionally encountering minor resistance, though never a full-on force. Even as Marco fired at the beasts—the weapon’s pulse no more than a slap to those impenetrable hides—he wondered if she had succeeded in nuking the Prevenire. If she hadn’t, this was all for naught.
“Did you destroy it?” he shouted as he sighted another Draegis and aimed at the eye slits, a target that seemed to have the most slowing power against their lava-armored bodies. It was a sweet spot, soft, blinding.
“What do you think set off the alarm?” she called over her shoulder.
The Prevenire was gone. Marco took a calming breath. Now he just had to make sure the beasts didn’t get in his head again. These demons couldn’t reverse his data wipe, which meant they’d undoubtedly take every measure to ensure he did not escape.
They can try . . .
A black blur erupted from the side. He pivoted and fired, but the thing kept coming. He fired again. And again. Again. Only then did the thing start to slow—but not before it drew back its arm, a wake rippling off the front.
Reek! Marco dove into Eija, knocking her forward. Heat seared his back and he growled through it. This wasn’t going to work. At this rate, they’d die on the ship.
Something grabbed him from behind and lifted him off Eija, into the air.
Suspended, Marco tried to find what held him when a sharp pinch needled his spine. No! Panic lit through him. That felt like the medbay injection. He struggled to free himself. Or rather . . . he thought he did, but a terrible realization hit—his limbs weren’t cooperating. His mouth wouldn’t open. His fist wouldn’t punch.
Paralyzed!
The beast that held him turned him so they were face-to-face.
Silvermark had come to exact his vengeance.
Eija and Jadon were firing at the high-ranking beast, who seemed oblivious and unharmed.
Fear gripped Marco. He knew what they’d do—dig out the memories, find the route back to Herakles and Kedalion. To Isaura. Venom spiked in his veins. He cried out—silently—to the Lady who had spoken prophecy over him. Please! Please help.
Feeling infused his arm—fire. The fire of the brand. Unable to move, he couldn’t see it, but the pure white glow of the brand seared the passage with its light. Marco saw it rippling over Silver’s slits. The beast froze. Stumbled back, extending Marco out as if he were a rotten, repulsive dead rat.
Something flew from a panel and clamped onto Marco’s forearm. Coated it. Talons dug into his flesh, and amid his growl, feeling returned to his limbs, like a million pricking needles.
Howling reverberated through the ship, Lavabeasts shrieking as they all fell still.
With a low mewling, Silvermark set Marco down, inclined his head, and backed away . . . away . . . away, until the corridor was empty.
What was going on? Why’d they stop? This had to be a trick. A ruse to trap Marco, kill the others. Though his body was no longer paralyzed, he didn’t dare move, other than to glance at the thing wrapped around his arm. He shook it. Nothing happened. He tried to pry it free. No good.
“Go!” Jadon shouted and darted away. “Go go go.”
Rattled, Marco took longer than usual to gather his wits. With no answers and a fire the size of Pir in his arm, he pushed himself into a sprint. He raced around the corner behind Eija and Jadon, Blue bringing up the rear. His ears rang with trepidation. This ship made no sense. It was like being immersed in a dream with all its distorted twists and turns and his limbs feeling like they were anchors. Surreal things happening that made sense one second then became even more convoluted the next.
They banked right and headed toward a bay door. In seconds, they were through it, and Marco felt a spark of hope when he spotted a small craft inside. Unbelievably, heat plumes warbled off it. The fast-attack craft was already powered up.
Blue trilled and kept moving, intent. They boarded the craft, and Marco glanced back, his heart crashing against his ribs as he saw five Draegis at the open bay door, arms powered up.
Marco aimed back, but his gaze twitched from the pulse pistol to the thing ensconcing his forearm, the brand. Had it somehow attracted the armor? Unsettled, he rotated his arm and watched the armor flex and crackle against the shield. Black formed the foundation for an intricate network of joints and flexible material. Had he not seen the thing leap from the hull and attach to his arm, and were it not for the distinctly poly-alloy joints and veins that added to its lightweight sturdiness, he wouldn’t believe it himself. Despite the solid feel, it was crafted of some type of hide. On top of his wrist, two nubs sprouted silvery-blue veins that crisscrossed and ran to the underside of his arm, vanishing into a transparent material that melded . . .
Right into my brand. When his brand pulsed, so did the veins of the vambrace-like device. What . . .? Somehow, he felt the thing . . . vibrating deep down. Gut clenching, he flicked his wrist to dislodge it. Didn’t work.
“They’re not firing.” Jadon backed up, past Marco. “Why aren’t they firing?”
Good question. One Marco couldn’t answer. Yet he felt the answer churning through the fire in his adunatos. Through the brand. Through this armored thing that now had a wake rumbling around it. What the Reek?
Jadon’s gaze hit Marco’s arm and he scowled.
“Don’t ask.”
“Watch out!” He shoved Marco aside as a blast seared between them and struck the elevated cockpit, where the girl and Blue were strapping in, talking hurriedly to each other in that strange language.
Jadon arched an eyebrow toward the girl and beast. “Believe me now?” They stumbled back as the bay door started closing.
Yeah, Marco saw, but whatever the connection there, it couldn’t be changed right now. “Gotta let it go. Get secured.”
Jadon harrumphed as he dropped into a seat behind Blue.
Forearm strangely heavy from the Draegis plating suctioned to his limb, Marco struggled with the harness of the auto-adjusting seat that molded to his body because the torso kept shortening. Apparently, Draegis were massive beings, more so than he’d realized.
Had to admit—the girl’s calm, focused efflux was strange. Considering what they were facing, what was at risk, why wasn’t she worried? Then again, piloting an aircraft required a lot of concentration . . . Still, there should’ve been some thread of concern in her Signature.
Let her worry about ensuring their escape. He was glad she was in the cockpit, because the last thing he wanted was to be plugged into a Draegis system or anything else ever again.
Light flickered through the bay door.
A hulking Draegis spirited preternaturally fast into the opening, his weaponized arm spitting off several bursts, the acrid odor scorching Marco’s nostrils.
Heart in his throat and harnessed in, he couldn’t escape. Couldn’t hide. They could recapture him. Get the coordinates. They’d need him alive, right? Or could they somehow extract the data from his corpse? It was a very real risk he hadn’t before considered. If that were true—this could be it. They’d kill him. He’d never see Isaura or their daughter.
He would not go down without a fight, though.
Instinct aimed his armored arm. Light erupted from the thing, sending a bolt of pure energy through the forcefield, across the deck, and straight into the beast. The creature evaporated even as its volley bounced off the very shield Marco’s shot had penetrated, causing it to ripple with a strange blue-silver shimmer.
The hatch groaned shut as the ship lifted from the flight deck.
“What the scuz was that?” Jadon shouted, his voice carrying through comms that operated across their seats. He stared wide-eyed at Marco, apparently still as shocked as he was at the blast from the armor clinging to his forearm like some self-aware vambrace.
Marco felt another pinch at the back of his neck, his PICC-line receiving a cold jolt as the craft shot forward. Pinned in the crash couch, he felt his tangled thoughts coalesce into one drive: survival.
They dove hard. He gripped the armrests as they went into what he could only describe as a death dive. Breath in the back of his throat, he struggled to shift his gaze, angle his head to see the cockpit where Blue sat with Eija on his right.
Our lives are in the hands of a Draegis.
The thought terrified him.