Nos Kil sneered at Ricio.
“Guess not.”
“Just stay behind me and don’t get killed, jockey.”
“I can do that.”
The lift doors slid apart to reveal a large command bridge. A dozen workstations ran along the walls, while several stand-alone units faced the room-wide holo display that took up the far wall. Two men sat beside one another, intent on some sort of holo targeting system that correlated with a map in the main window, while a white robot was slumped in a chair by itself.
Neither man noticed Ricio and Nos Kil enter. The two crew members wore white uniforms with blue pinstripes—casual wear, by the looks of it—and soft-soled shoes. Since their well-muscled bodies seemed to make the suits tear at the seams, Ricio guessed they were Marines like Nos Kil, one tall with black skin, the other short with a dark olive complexion.
While Ricio hesitated, taking in the scene, Nos Kil did not. The beast of a shirtless barrel-chested man took off like a racing hound on a high-stakes track. Whether at the sound of his feet or the rush of air, the shorter of the two turned just in time to see Nos Kil lunge at them. Nos Kil dropped his shoulder and caught the man in the chest, driving him out of his chair and into his partner. Together, all three men fell sideways and tumbled into the floor in a heap.
Ricio ran forward to meet them, still unsure what he should do. Nos Kil rolled to his knees and started throwing punches at the black man, drilling his face so hard Ricio thought the man’s skull might implode. But the shorter man threw a powerful punch at Nos Kil’s side, causing the Marine to fold.
The black man pushed the enemy off him and sat up just as the short one dove after Nos Kil. Then both crew members were exchanging punches with the former prisoner—all three men caught in a violent struggle of blows, blocks, hand holds, and rolls. The black man seemed to be growing frantic, his swings becoming more impulsive and less accurate. He shouted profanity at Nos Kil as the two grappled along the floor. Likewise, the shorter crew member seemed to be losing his mind, snarling and cursing as he delivered several wild blows. The two men acted as though Nos Kil was the last man they’d ever fight. But the passion of their hatred appeared to cloud their judgement as Nos Kil was getting the upper hand even despite being outnumbered.
Pick a side, pilot, Ricio told himself. That was when he saw a blaster pistol on the floor beside one of the crash couches. It must have fallen from one of the two crew members’ hips. He reached down and grabbed the weapon, bringing it to bear on the fight scene that moved into the middle of the bridge.
“Everyone stand down,” he ordered. But his command went completely unheard. Nos Kil had his hand clenched around the smaller one’s throat while he jabbed at the other man’s nose, causing a fountain of blood to stain the floor.
“I said, stand down!” Ricio aimed at the ground just to the side of the men and squeezed the trigger. A blue blaster bolt—much larger than he expected the diminutive weapon to produce—leaped from the barrel with a shriek. Sparks and smokey rivulets exploded from the charred hole in the floor. All three men jerked at the sound and froze, hands going up.
“That’s better.” Ricio trained the weapon on the cluster of men. “I need names.”
“What are you doing, jockey?” Nos Kil asked with a hiss. “Shoot these pieces of splick!”
“Can it, Marine.”
Nos Kil’s eye went wild, his mouth turning into a snarling maw of blood-soaked teeth. “Why I ought to—”
“I can very easily poke out your other eye if you want a matching pair.” Ricio stared down the sight and glared at Nos Kil’s remaining eye. “Didn’t think so. Now, I’m going to ask one last time—names.”
“I’m—I’m…” The black man stuttered, trying hard to come to his senses and waving his hands at the weapon. “I’m Michael Deeks. This—this is Miguel Chico.”
“And what were you doing there?” Ricio flicked the pistol back toward their workstation.
“None of your business,” Chico said. “None of your damn business!”
“Oh, but I think it is my business—that is, if you want my help.”
“Your help?” Deeks asked with no effort to hide is disbelief.
“Moldark’s going to annihilate you, jockey,” Nos Kil said, spitting out a mouthful of blood.
“You really don’t want that other eye, do you, Nos Kil,” Ricio said, tilting his head at the man.
“You don’t have the balls.”
Ricio smiled. “I may not have your brawn, Marine. And I definitely don’t have your stomach for pain. But I can assure you, you’ve never seen balls the size of a Talon pilot’s. So unless you want to miss out on the view, I suggest you shut up.”
“What were you doing there?” Rico asked again, dedicating his attention to Deeks.
“Orbital fire support for our unit,” Deeks replied.
“Magnus?”
The two crew looked at each other, then Deeks replied with a nod. “Magnus.”
“Then I suggest you get back to it, Deeks.”
The black man’s eyebrows raised. “I… I’m not sure I understand.”
“And you, Chico. You’re gonna help me put this sicko back in his doghouse. Copy?” While Ricio talked, he noticed a setting on the pistol’s rear graphic display that seemed to lower the weapon’s discharge amperage while increasing the voltage.
Chico glanced at Nos Kil, then back at Ricio. “I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.”
Nos Kil spat more blood on the ground. “Oh, he’s joking al—”
Nos Kil didn’t finish the statement before Ricio fired at his chest. The Marine’s back slammed into the deck and his body convulsed, legs thrashing, arms grasping at the invisible wound. In another second, his body went still.
“What in hell is going on here?” Deeks asked.
“That’s gonna be the same question Magnus asks you if you don’t get back on those controls, Deeks.”
“Call me Flow,” the man said, standing to his feet and wiping blood from his lip. “This here’s Cheeks.”
Cheeks remained on the ground and closed his eyes, taking several slow breaths. That was when Ricio realized what he was looking at. These boys had seen action—a lot of action. Enough that that they’d probably never truly come off the battlefield. Damn.
“And that?” Ricio pointed toward the bot in the crash couch.
“That there’s Azelon,” Cheeks said as Flow helped him up. “The ship’s AI in bodily form.”
“Ship’s got a dedicated bot?” Ricio asked.
Deeks gave him a nod. “Something happened to her about ten minutes ago.”
Cheeks squinted at Ricio. “Say, that wouldn’t have anything to do with—”
“I don’t know anything about it,” Ricio said. “Something happened to the force fields and security doors in the brig. Nos Kil wanted to clear this bridge, and I decided to go along with it until—”
“Until you saw whose side was going to win?” Cheeks asked.
“Until I found a way to stop him,” Ricio replied, doing his best to distance himself from the inner argument that he’d been wrestling with until a few moments ago. As a sign of good faith, Ricio flipped the weapon around and extended the grip to Cheeks, seeing as how he was the one with the empty holster. “I’ll take his feet, you take his hands. Then, when I get back, we need to have a talk.”
“About what?” Cheeks asked.
“About what else this ship has to offer a guy with balls my size.”
29
Awen and Rohoar ordered the Jujari and Willowood’s Luma into a defensive formation at the rear of the line. Piper stood beside Awen with her hands balled into fists, and Saasarr remained by the little girl’s side by order of Sootriman.
The elders had exchanged their slow march for an all-out run, racing toward Awen with terrible looks in their eyes. The sight produced several heart-thumping pangs of fear since she’d never seen their faces look so malevolent before. But battle had a way of ch
anging people—for the worse, she thought. For a split second, she wondered if she looked just as vile to them as they did to her. Mystics, I hope not. Then she remembered that she bore a helmet.
Awen slipped into her second sight and saw the Luma Elders approach in a dazzling array of flowing color and sparkling movement. Here, the sun had already risen to full height, adding its luster to the rhythmic charge of the enemy.
The enemy. Awen still could not believe she was about to dispense harm on those she’d spent the last seven years trying to emulate. How had this happened? How had things gone so horribly wrong?
“Krufka,” Rohoar yelled—the Jujari command for hold. Awen looked over to see the Jujari on all fours. Their rumps and shoulders were low, heads down, fangs exposed. They snarled at the oncoming enemy, ready to charge forward. Yet Rohoar’s simple command kept their feet planted, saliva dripping onto the tops of their forepaws.
Likewise, Willowood assumed a defensive Li-Loré stance—one hand forward, palm up, the other hand balled into a fist and held behind her head. Several of the Luma beside her adopted a similar pose, while the rest of the elders lowered their heads and prepared for the clash.
“Just push them back,” Awen said to Piper. “Keep them from hurting us wherever you can.”
“Yes, shydoh.”
Awen readied herself and summoned the energy of the Foundation and the Nexus into her body. She felt it surge into her limbs, called up from the deep. Then she blew a strand of hair off her face that had fallen down inside her helmet. “Here goes nothing.”
The battle lines closed in the Unity and in the natural realm, producing blasts of heat and light in both realms. The energy washed over buildings and people like a tidal wave, shoving matter and molecules away from the epicenter.
Awen held her ground as an elder drove his hand into her personal shield. The sparks of the impact made Awen wince, but she did not yield to the immense amount of power behind the punch. Instead, she wrapped energy around the outstretched fist like a rope, yanked the aggressor’s arm down with one hand, and then shoved the man away with the other. Her newfound abilities in the additional realms of the Unity had made Awen strong—far stronger than even the greatest elder. The man flew backward and collided with two other Luma. The three toppled to the ground in an eruption of color.
Willowood easily defended herself against an over-anxious attacker, while Rohoar managed to bite through another Luma’s personal shield. His teeth seized the assailant’s arm, then his head turned and flipped the man sideways onto the ground. Another flip back in the other direction not only tore the elder’s limb from his side, but smacked his head hard enough to knock him out.
“Awen,” Piper screamed. When Awen looked up, a female elder had leaped into the air and was sailing down at Awen with both hands spread, ready to strike. Awen raised her hands by instinct to block the blow, but Piper arrested the woman’s movement and drove her head straight into the concrete street. Awen gasped as the woman’s head and shoulders buried themselves in the fissure. Sparks struck Awen in the Unity while concrete bounced off her suit in the natural realm. The elder remained motionless, her head clearly crushed from the impact.
“Piper, I thought I told you—”
“Here comes another!”
Awen ripped her attention from Piper to see another elder charge her, this time presenting some sort of javelin in the Unity. She’d never seen a weapon fashioned before and wondered if this was something of So-Elku’s doing.
The elder hurled the weapon, but Awen sidestepped it, allowing it to pass by. She’d not been thinking, however, that a gladia from Titus’s platoon was standing behind her. The lance penetrated the man’s back, pushing his heart clear out of his armored chest. In the natural, Awen only saw a hole open and the organ shoot from the victim, bathed in a spray of blood.
She noted that his name was Andocs and remembered the red-haired man from Magnus’s training back on Neith Tearness. The gladia had been a tireless worker, always eager to learn new tactics and implement them quickly once he’d gained mastery. She was only sad that her careless dodge had cost the gladia his life.
Awen saw the elder fashion another javelin and hurl it at her. This time, Awen caught the spear, twirled it around, and released the weapon’s momentum back toward the attacker. The javelin struck the man, picked him off his feet, and pinned him to a second Luma. Both men fell to the ground in a heap, dead within seconds.
Willowood had dispensed with merely trying to incapacitate her victims. Instead, her lethal force was displayed by rending one victim of his hips and legs as her arm passed through his abdomen in a lightning-fast sweep. The Luma had been caught so off guard that he froze in shock, looked down at his lower half, and then screamed as his torso fell forward.
Awen’s heart thumped loudly in her head as she realized her mentor—the woman she revered more than any other in the galaxy for her teaching on non-violent resistance—had just slain a fellow Luma in battle. And violently so. She wanted to scream, to protest, to make everything stop. What she feared the most had come upon her, and not even Magnus’s words could calm the fire raging in her chest. She wanted everything to stop—for it to all go away. But it wasn’t. And it wouldn’t. The violence unfolding before her eyes was as inevitable as gravity, pulling her recklessly toward the mass of war.
Then her eyes stopped on Piper. In Awen’s observance of Willowood, another elder had lunged for the little girl. Whether to grab her by the throat or yank her behind enemy lines, Awen didn’t know. But she was sure the girl’s life was in danger. And Awen felt violated. Not as if her own personhood was in jeopardy, but that someone would attempt to take what she loved. To capture or kill Piper—a child.
For a fraction of a second, time stood still for Awen. It was as if the entire scene around her was frozen in a multidimensional portrait, one rendered in astounding clarity. Bodies poised in the throes of assault. Blaster bolts suspended in midair. Sparks and droplets of blood trailing from slices in throat, leg, and shoulder. Everywhere around her was carnage, the gruesome display of lives turned inward, bent on destruction of the other.
There, in that still moment, Awen chose.
She chose to be a part of it despite every cell in her body wishing otherwise. She chose to resist the evil that sought to stop her and her kinsfolk. She chose to give herself to the wave of resistance that surged up the beachhead and broke against the sandcastle of So-Elku’s hate.
The scene raced back to life.
Awen had awakened.
One foot followed the next, legs sweeping through the air in a lethal dance that flipped her body upside down. Feet met bone, hands struck flesh, and her body became an instrument of war. The man who tried to reach for Piper lost both arms. He fell forward, and Awen’s upswinging arms launched him skyward where his body was riddled with blaster fire. It was as if she had seen each bolt streak across the warming sky and she’d sent his armless body up to be intercepted with perfect precision.
Awen’s movement was an endless flow of lethal action. Her thoughts became expressions, and her expressions became parries and thrusts, blasts and blocks. Each twisting duck and every leaping kick was interconnected, joined to her ardent resolution to stop the enemy.
She extended her palms to drive an elder back, the explosion of energy turning from yellow to brilliant magenta—the color of the Nexus. The body flew into the horde of Luma, crushing several who waited for their turn at the front lines.
Two more assailants stepped in to challenge her, both raising weapons made of pure energy. Awen pictured a bar of impenetrable metal form in her hands. As the enemies’ weapons came down, Awen felt the blows crash upon the long magenta shaft she held in her outstretched hands. The instruments collided and froze, spitting sparks in brilliant cascades of yellow and red, until Awen roared and thrust the attackers away. Their bodies flew back, colliding with others in a heap.
More enemies charged her, perhaps determining that she was the gre
atest threat. But with each attack, Awen’s strikes transitioned into one another with seamless succession. She was an unstoppable force, twirling and undulating, firing and decimating. At one point, she had called so much energy up from the Nexus that she felt as if her whole body might explode. Instead, she redirected the flow and watched as it bored a path all the way through the enemy’s ranks. The beam disintegrated everything it touched, stopping only when she saw it touch a residential building in the distance.
The action had been so violent that the elders stopped their assault. For the briefest moment, Awen thought she heard them gasp. Blaster fire and explosions continued at the front of the advance, but in the rear, everyone looked at Awen in stunned silence. All, but one attacker, that is.
The man thrust at Awen with some sort of glowing pike. She only caught it out of the corner of her eye. Until it vanished. Awen was sure it had penetrated her. But the man was gone.
Instead, a new scream went out from somewhere far above her. Awen looked up and saw the man falling toward the street, directly above where he’d stood a split second before. His voice grew louder as his flailing limbs did nothing to slow his fall. Awen stepped back as the man landed in a sickening thud two meters away.
Blood sprayed her suit while sparks struck her body. She stared at the corpse, wondering how she’d done such a thing. But Awen knew it wasn’t her abilities that had done this. Not even she knew how to transport natural matter inside the Unity.
But Piper might.
Awen spun around and used her second sight to see the little girl’s face. Piper glared at the dead man’s body. When she spoke, her voice was strained and cold. “He was going to kill you, shydoh.”
“Piper, you—”
“He was going to murder you.”
Awen wanted to say more, but the enemy charged again.
30
Piper hadn’t planned to move the man into the sky. It just seemed like the best option given how close he’d been to Awen. He’d wanted to hurt her shydoh, Piper could see it—she could sense his hostility. And she wasn’t going to let that happen. Not now, not ever. So Piper moved him, and then let him go. That was all. And when he hit the ground, she felt satisfied that he hadn’t survived. He was an evil person who’d wanted to do evil things. Like hurt Awen.
Ruins of the Galaxy Box Set: Books 1-6 Page 124