Anethe is staring at me wide-eyed, face pale. To his credit, he doesn’t run, but like I say, his zero-gee was bad. My kick is hard enough to make him puke, and as he tears his helmet from his head rather than choke on the vomit, I lay him out with a nerve-strike I picked up from Kal during that brawl on Sempiternity. Turning back to a groaning de Vriis, I choke him with a sleeper hold until he blacks out.
2–nil.
De Renn is more trouble. I actually lied to him on the dock: he’d have been my first pick for Tank if I hadn’t gotten lumped with Kal. I genuinely liked the guy. We used to play jetball back in academy days.
But I guess these aren’t academy days anymore.
I ambush him as he floats back from his sweep of my cell—Cohen obeying regs, easy to predict, yet again. De Renn’s disruptor won’t work after the EMP, and he’s broken out some weapons, no doubt from his own personal stash—a pair of hooked Betraskan fighting sticks called satkha.
I wallop him in the back of the head with a fire extinguisher, but even stunned he doesn’t drop, actually gives me a decent shot to the jaw before I take a leaf from the Saedii Gilwraeth playbook and lay him out with a thunderous knee to the groin. He goes belly-up, making a noise I can only describe as a squeam—half-scream, half-squeal.
I wrench off his helmet and put a sleeper hold on him, struggling to control him as he flails and bucks. He finally goes limp, and I choke him for as long as it’s safe, then give him an apologetic shrug. “Sorry, buddy. No hard feels.”
3–nil.
The other three members of Squad 303 are on the bridge. Their Ace is at the helm—an old drinking buddy of Cat’s named Rioli. He’s a big guy, sandy blond hair and bright blue eyes. Cohen is at another station trying to resurrect comms. Their Face, a pretty Terran girl named Savitri, is near the entrance. Her helmet visor is up so she can chew a fingernail, long hair floating about her cheeks as she squints into the dark.
“Shouldn’t Bel be back by now?” she asks.
“Relax, Amelia,” Cohen replies. “He’s probably in his quarters deciding which of his favorite murderclubs to break out. What’s our status, Rioli?”
“Still nothing,” the Ace replies. “Whatever hit us—”
He turns at the wet THWACK of Savitri’s face meeting my satkha. The girl pinwheels back with a bubbling gasp, nose spraying blood. She collides with the wall just as I collide with Rioli, slamming him into the console and smashing him so hard in the ribs I hear bone crack.
“Maker’s breath,” Cohen breathes. “Jones—”
I know what she sees as I turn on her. My knuckles and face are spattered with blood, Terran red and Syldrathi purple and Betraskan pink. I must look every inch the criminal, the killer, the terrorist that the GIA painted me as—Aurora Legion’s most promising Alpha, turned into a cold-blooded psychopath.
But thing is, it’s not madness that drives me forward, doubling her up with a shot to her belly. It’s not rage making me slam my open palm into the base of her skull, sending her bouncing off the deck, groaning and senseless.
It’s desperation. It’s fear.
Because I can see it. Even as I strip Squad 303 down to their unmentionables and lock them in my detention cell, welding the door shut with an acetylene lance from the cargo hold. Even as I change into Rioli’s uniform and float back up to the bridge, praying for the Gods of Auto-Repair Systems to work quicker. Even as the power finally flickers and shifts back online, as I slide into the pilot’s chair and whisper thanks to the Maker.
I can see it.
That image of Aurora Academy. Blowing itself to pieces in a halo of fire and shrapnel, ripping apart the last hope for peace in the galaxy.
I can feel it, rising beyond—that shadow, set to swallow the galaxy. And I can hear it—that voice, that plea, begging me to keep going even if I have to go on alone.
I lay in a course for Aurora Academy. Hit thrust on my engines.
… you can fix this, Tyler …
“Damn right I can,” I whisper.
And I’m away.
18
SCARLETT
Finian’s lips are warm and soft, and as they leave a burning trail down my neck, I shiver all the way to my toes. We’re lying on a thin temperfoam mattress, and the sheets are rumpled around us, and the view out the small porthole beside us is perfect darkness, lit by tiny pulses of mauve light. My shirt is untucked, and one of Fin’s hands is tracing soft circles in the small of my back, the metal on his fingertips charged with a faint current that makes my skin tingle in the best ways. I run my fingers through his hair and pull him in tighter, sighing encouragement as I feel his kisses on my neck.