by Cheree Alsop
“She loved me,” he growled. “She and Day were only together to spite me. It’s pathetic that a half-blood is our truest claim to royalty and that I was forced to raise you despite your mother’s betrayal. I should have killed you the day you were born.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Those ebbs and flows you spoke of are simply the happenchance colliding of events to remind us that we’re merely synapses of thought struggling to survive. It is truly survival of the cruelest, Liora; thus is nature. Those who are willing to bend the furthest away from the humanity you so value are those who evolve and survive to tear through flesh another day.”
Liora met his fiery glare, something she had never dared to do when she was younger.
“I hold in this box the only key to your survival,” she said, her voice deadly serious. “How ironic is it that you tried so hard to kill me when I was a child, yet now I am the only one who can give you your life back? You call it a happenchance colliding of events. I call it proof that fate has a sense of humor.”
Obruo sat back and looked away from her. Liora was glad to be rid of his angered scrutiny. Despite everything she had learned since her time on Ralian, her heart still quelled at the thought of being within Obruo’s grasp once more. She would not go to him without a fight. The Nameless Ones would meet their match, something they had gone without for far too long.
“Devren!” Kiari exclaimed.
“Thank goodness you’re safe,” Devren replied, climbing into the Gull.
Kiari and Mrs. Metis gave the Kratos captain a hug. He hugged them back while keeping a careful eye on Obruo.
“Is the bridge door sealed shut again?” Liora pushed into his mind.
Devren glanced at her and gave the barest nod. He looked as anxious as she felt about what was coming up. They would only have one chance. It had to count.
Devren steered the craft clear of the Kratos.
“Hyrin, I’ll notify you upon our return. If you don’t hear my voice, don’t allow the Gull to dock.” He looked back at Obruo. “I will preserve our crew if it’s the last thing I do.”
Obruo gave a shallow nod. “A credit to you, Captain. Just hope you never find yourself without a crew or a ship. A title is an unsettling thing when one has nothing else left to give its name meaning.”
Devren didn’t answer. The lighting planet of Verdan appeared in the main window. Liora had to will her grip on the box to relax. The last thing she needed to do was break it while on the Gull.
“Sound the alarm,” Liora pushed into Devren’s mind when Verdan was close enough.
Devren casually slipped his hand down the control panel. Liora glanced at Obruo, but the Damaclan chief had his eyes on the green lighting that surrounded the planet.
The siren wailed and lights flashed.
“What’s going on?” Obruo demanded.
“We’re losing pressure,” Devren replied. “Everyone, get atmosphere suits on. I’ll see if I can isolate the leak, but we’re losing oxygen fast.”
Liora handed him an atmosphere suit and pulled on one of her own. She kept the knives strapped to the inside of the suit instead of the outside, and at all times, she made sure to keep a firm hold on the wooden box.
“The ship is shaking,” Obruo said, his voice muffled inside the helmet. He grabbed a strap to keep standing. “What’s going on?”
“The pressure is too much,” Devren said. “I can’t keep control of the ship. I need to open the hatch to even it out. Hold on, everyone!”
Kiari let out a shriek of terror when the hatch opened to reveal the darkness of space and the globe of the green lightning planet below.
Liora inched toward the open hatch. Everyone fought to hold on with Devren’s jerky flying and the rattling of equipment inside the Gull. Liora slipped her hand beneath the controls of the small Grebe she had placed inside the ship before they left.
“What are you doing?” Obruo demanded. “Liora!”
Liora shoved out of the open hatch and pulled the Grebe out with her into space before Obruo could stop her.
“Get back here!” Obruo yelled. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Finishing what I started,” Liora replied. “Thank you, Devren. Please tell Tariq I’m sorry.” She pressed the communicator button on her helmet to shut it off so she didn’t hear Obruo’s yells.
Liora hit the starter for the Grebe and it jerked forward. The box nearly slipped from her gloved hands, but Liora caught it and trapped it between her body and the Grebe. It took a moment to get the thrusters pointed in the right direction, then she was plummeting toward the lightning planet.
The green lightning arched and darted across the darkness, reaching and fading only to reappear in a tangled ball that spanned Verdan.
Tramareaus’ words kept repeating over and over in Liora’s mind. “This blue orb is Bilar. It’s a cold energy annihilated only by a very concentrated sum of volts in amounts I can only begin to imagine.”
Verdan’s entire atmosphere was cloaked in lightning. It was the most volts Liora had ever seen in one place. She hoped it would be enough.
The hair on her arms and the back of her neck stood up the closer the Grebe pulled her to the planet. She didn’t want the machine to interfere with the volts, so at the last minute, she flipped the thrusters away and let go. The small Grebe whirled off into the darkness of space, leaving her alone with the box and the looming planet.
“The Nameless Ones said I would be the key to end it all. I have a feeling this isn’t what they meant,” Liora said aloud to keep herself centered. “I also have a feeling this is going to hurt.”
She opened the box and the light of the blue orb filled her vision. The crackling of the lightning flooded around her. Liora took a breath to calm the way her heart thundered in her chest and she put her hand beneath the orb to lift it free.
The energy pulsed around her, beckoning, begging for her to pull it inside of her, to save it from destruction by the volts. It would protect her. She didn’t need to die to destroy it. It would keep her and those she loved safe. The Nameless Ones could be her allies. She didn’t need to face the volts alone.
“No!” Liora spoke the word through gritted teeth. As much as the power tempted her, she would never align herself with creatures like the Nameless Ones.
A bolt of lightning struck her atmosphere suit and surged up her arm to the orb. The shock made Liora scream in pain. Another bolt struck her, then another. The green lightning flowed up to the blue orb where it danced and writhed on her palm. Within seconds, she couldn’t see it past the flow of green energy. Her heart surged, struggling to pump beyond the surges of electricity.
Liora’s back arched and she screamed again through her tightly clenched jaw. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t struggle. The static filled her mouth with metallic sparks and made her ears ring. Through partially-closed eyelids, Liora saw the blue orb begin to expand. She tried to push away from it, but she was suspended in the lightning, unable to do anything but watch in terror as the orb grew bigger and bigger.
The orb’s color changed from blue to swirls of green lightning and Bilar energy as it expanded. Liora’s hand was sucked into the sphere. Pain flowed up her shoulder and into her chest. It crept up to her forearm and then her shoulder. Jagged blue and green marks etched across Liora’s atmosphere suit. The pain was excruciating. Liora felt herself blacking out.
The orb shrunk slightly, then burst outward. Liora was thrown through the air. She plummeted toward Verdan. Her last glimpse before she met the darkness was of the orb withdrawing into itself, a mere speck in the atmosphere, then it vanished.
Chapter 9
The fall through the dark Verdan sky felt timeless. Liora struggled to turn, to slow her descent, but she couldn’t move. The rush of the air past her helmet sounded loud in her ears. She knew the atmosphere suit wouldn’t be able to save her from the impact. Tariq’s face came to her mind, his blue eyes filled with emotion the way they had been when she pushed her love at him. Her
death would hurt him.
“Forgive me, Tariq,” she whispered.
Something hit her back so hard it knocked the breath from her lungs. She slammed into a branch, then another, pin balling through the strange vined trees near Echo. She hit another branch, then plunged into thick liquid. The boiling swamp fluid sucked her down. Liora’s arms and legs refused to respond. She couldn’t fight as the dense, pulsing orange liquid dragged her to its depths.
Liora’s feet touched the bottom. She tried to push off, but the mud sucked at her shoes, holding her fast. Something bumped against her. She peered through the shield of her close-fitting helmet, and jerked back when the skull of an unknown creature was revealed. Its flesh was mostly gone and the toothy skull grinned eerily in the throbbing half-light. Liora shoved it away.
The atmosphere suit began to heat up. Being cooked to death at the bottom of a swamp in Verdan was the last place Liora had thought she would die. She had been able to accept dying as an outcome of blowing up the orb. Boiling to death in orange liquid was a far different matter. It was slow, extremely painful, and it felt like the weight of the liquid around her was crushing her. She didn’t know how long she stayed there in the grip of certain death.
Liora’s communicator crackled. It must have switched on when she fell through the trees.
“Liora?”
The voice sounded faint, but filled with panic.
“Liora?”
It had to be Tariq. The feeling, the way he called her name, and the edge of hysteria in his voice gripped her heart. Liora couldn’t think past the shock of hearing his voice. The pain and heat was becoming unbearable.
‘Tariq!’ she pushed with all of her strength.
“Liora!” he replied. “Hold on!”
Something else bumped against her. Liora shied away from the touch, expecting another carcass suspended in the bog. Whatever it was followed her and teeth clamped onto her shoulder hard. Liora let out a yell of pain. She struggled away from the red-hot agony. It bit harder and she felt the teeth grind against her shoulder blade and the front of her shoulder as though the creature wanted to bite clear through. Liora’s knives were strapped beneath her atmosphere suit. She pounded against the scaled head, but couldn’t get it to let go.
‘Tariq, it’s got me,’ she pushed.
A hand wrapped around her arm and pulled. The force felt like it would rip her arm from her body, but the mud slowly gave up her feet. As soon as she was clear, she was pulled upward through the liquid. The creature attached to her shoulder fought back, trying to tear her free. Liora grabbed onto the hand with both of hers regardless of the pain. Her head cleared the liquid, then her shoulders. She got a glimpse of the creature for the first time.
Strange yellow-pupiled clear eyes stared back at her. The spikes that lined the creature’s toothed snout glowed yellow against its black scales. Its eyes narrowed and it bit down harder. Liora let out a yell.
“Get off her!” Tariq shouted.
Two shots tore through the air. The creature’s eyes became gaping holes. Its jaw loosened. Tariq shoved the gun back into his sheath and unwrapped his arm from the rope tied to the closest tree. He reached up for a higher grip and pulled them to the shore. Liora tried to help, but her limbs wouldn’t respond. Tariq refused to let her go to climb onto the bank. Instead, he shoved her up, which forced him back under. Liora rolled onto her back and watched him clamber up beside her covered in orange slime and fighting for breath.
Tariq pulled the creature’s teeth from Liora’s shoulder and threw the body back into the swamp.
He unhooked his helmet and tossed it aside.
“I didn’t know those were down there,” he said, his tone strange as if he was forcing it to remain light.
Tariq worked quickly, wiping away the liquid that coated Liora’s atmosphere suit. He peered through her helmet shield, worry bright in his eyes.
“Stay with me, Liora,” he said.
Liora tried to respond, but the sensation of being crushed wouldn’t leave.
“I’ve got you,” Tariq told her.
He twisted her helmet to release the catch, then lifted her shoulders gently and slid it free. Liora felt trapped inside the atmosphere suit. She tried to pull down the zipper, but her gloves fingers felt clumsy. Tariq caught her hand.
“Take it easy,” he said quietly.
He slid the zipper down and eased her arms out of the suit. A moment later, Liora lay on the glowing jungle grass in her Ventican clothing with her head pillowed on Tariq’s lap. He had fashioned a bandage around her shoulder from the supplies he carried in his suit, and he held pressure to the bite wound.
Liora’s hair clung to her sweaty face. He smoothed it gently away.
“What am I going to do with you, Liora Day?”
“I-I couldn’t let you come with me,” she forced out. “You would have stopped me.”
His gaze was stormy when he replied, “Of course I would have. I have a problem with my girl trying to get herself killed saving everyone else.”
A smile spread across Liora’s face before she could stop it.
Tariq stared down at her. “What are you smiling at?” he demanded.
Liora’s smile stayed despite his anger. “You called me your girl,” she said.
Tariq gave a sound of disbelief, but a smile crossed his face as well. “You are my girl, but my girl has a death wish.”
Liora moved to sit up. Tariq kept a steady hand on her back to support her.
“I only have a death wish when it comes to blowing up orbs that thwart Obruo’s plans.” She looked back at him. “How did you find me?”
“I had help,” Tariq replied vaguely.
Liora was about to ask who when she noticed the felis sitting near the edge of the jungle. She met its gaze and the felis rose; it stalked toward her on silent paws. The huge cat creature butted its head gently against her chest and when she petted it, the blue of its skeletal frame showed through its fur. The animal’s purr filled the clearing.
“The felis was waiting when I landed at Echo,” Tariq said. “When I figured out what you were up to, I got a ship from Brandis and headed straight here. I saw you fall.” He paused, then continued, his voice quieter, “I had no idea how I was going to find you, then the felis showed up. It forced me to follow it.”
He pulled off his glove and held out a hand. Claw marks showed in angry, bright red streaks down the back.
“It was persistent,” he said.
Liora took his hand and touched the marks gently. She pulled, drawing the pain away.
“Liora,” Tariq began.
“Hearing your voice was incredible,” she said. Emotions tightened in her chest, making it hard to speak. “I was waiting to die, I had no way out, and then I heard your voice in my helmet.”
“I would have jumped in the swamp regardless,” Tariq told her. “But I wanted you to know I was there. I was amazed when I felt you call back.”
The felis settled contently next to them. After a minute, Tariq began to pet its head. The felis leaned against him.
“Brandis gave you a ship?” Liora asked. She regretted the way she had left things with her brother and father.
“I didn’t exactly give him a choice,” Tariq replied. “When I told him his sister’s life was on the line, he gave me his fastest ship and insisted on being the pilot. He’s waiting for us in the clearing.”
“I’m sorry about having you detained.”
Tariq rose to his knees in the grass and took her hands in his. “Liora, promise me one thing.”
The intensity in Tariq’s gaze sent a warm rush through Liora. “What is it?”
“We live together or die together.” The emotions made his eyes darken when he continued, “I’ve lived through the death of the first woman I loved. I’m not about to lose you as well.”
“Tariq,” Liora started.
He shook his head. “Promise me, Liora. I’m not going to sit back and let you rush off to face death in
whatever form it threatens by yourself. I’m not that man, and I don’t appreciate being put in that position.” His voice lowered, “Live or die, Liora, we fight our battles together. Promise me.”
Liora nodded. “I promise,” she whispered.
He cupped her cheeks with his hands and kissed her gently. When he sat back on his heels, he let out a sigh.
“I told myself I would do that again, but I didn’t dare believe it would really happen. When I saw you jump out with the orb, I felt like I jumped out with you.”
Liora thought of his face in her mind and the regrets that had filled her at the thought of leaving him.
“You did,” she replied.
Tariq watched her closely. “How are you feeling? Can you make it back to Echo?”
Liora nodded. “Now that I don’t feel like I’m stuck in one of Jarston’s stews, I can do anything.”
Tariq helped her to her feet. He slung her atmosphere suit over his shoulder and walked beside her through the trees. The felis stalked in front of them, its tail twitching and ears alert for any sound of danger.
Liora was relieved when they reached the remains of the town without incident. The Gull sat near the wreckage that had been the tavern.
Obruo rose from the open hatch, his hands cuffed behind his back and rage coloring his face red.
“What were you thinking?” he demanded. “You’ve killed us, you stupid mongr—”
Tariq punched Obruo so hard the Damaclan hit the side of the Gull before he fell to the ground. The human then pulled out his gun and aimed it at the chief. Obruo glared at him, his lips bloody and anger bright in his eyes.
“Tariq, wait!” Liora said.
Tariq shook his head. “He doesn’t deserve to live.”
“Tariq’s right,” Brandis said, stepping down from the Gull. “After all Obruo’s done, he doesn’t deserve mercy.”
Liora glanced from Tariq to her brother. Both looked out for blood, and Obruo was the target.
“I need him to tell the Damaclan chiefs that he lied. It’s the only way to keep Corian and the merchant ships safe. He has to testify, or everyone could be killed.”