Sela understood why Erelah had left the viewer active while the rest of the Cass’s systems remained locked out. She wanted witnesses for an impossible feat, the last act of incredible bravery that Sela had dismissed as a coward’s end.
This was not cowardice. As a soldier, to witness such an act of self-sacrifice from one who had been ally and enemy alike, she was rendered speechless.
A deadly blossom of azure veined with white consumed the entire midsection of that hideous Ravstar vessel. The hulking metal beast crumpled inward and folded toward the mouth of the flex point Erelah had created with the stryker. The skin of the carrier undulated under the ravages of the distortion wave.
A tremendous ball of fire issued along the exposed side of Tristic’s carrier. The flames quickly snuffed out in the cold of space. For a brief flickering moment, the wash of blue grew stronger still, eating metal wherever it landed.
“Great violence and force,” Sela muttered in awe, as the full scope of Erelah’s meaning flooded her.
After a punishing period of conduit travel, the reserves on the carrier’s velos must have been nearly drained. Somehow, the tiny stryker had the ability to trigger a flex point. This was the catalyst for an explosion that blessedly had little fuel. It had been just enough to mortally wound the Questic
.
Otherwise, we would not still be here.
The vortex vanished, leaving the ravaged carrier to twist against an invisible eddy, a huge gash dissecting its decks. It listed like a crushed insect, floating and writhing on the surface of a pond.
Around Sela, the command loft of the Cassandra popped back to life. The once red-barred consoles now resumed their prior interfaces. The drives hummed in a building crescendo as spool-up was initiated.
Erelah had done this. Or, more correctly, she had done this through Sela.
Their window was short. Regardless of the mortal wound that had been rendered, there was no real guarantee Tristic had been destroyed. The Cassandra was vulnerable to capture. Jon would have argued against it, but he was not there to stop her. He would have wanted to search the wreckage, seek out something that remained of his sister, as unlikely as it sounded.
They could not risk that hesitation. Sela made the decision for him. Another fault in the growing list of harms done against him.
She guided the Cassandra through the rapidly-splaying field of debris. At first, the vox was alive with the sound of living ghosts. Hectic voices pled for rescue. Others responded with ineffectual orders. Sela snapped the speaker off.
I have witnessed the end of too many things already.
Within moments, the aptly named dead node was a memory as the Cassandra limped its way through the conduit.
Jon remained at the other side of the bay door for a long time, knees drawn up, back pressed into the curve of the bulkhead. He watched some private landscape with red-rimmed eyes. Was he recounting every sin? Blaming himself for every squandered opportunity and wasted hope?
He never did say. Sela did not ask.