The smuggler boss laughed. There was no joy in it. Some kind of fluid leaked from the corner of his mouth, and he did not even bother wiping it away.
“My entire crew is dead. At least now you’ll die too.”
The Divani brothers exchanged a look. Lily felt something shift in the air, heavy and immediate.
Until now, no matter what happened, she had felt a thread of hope. Thin, but present. The belief that she could still do something, that there was still a way through.
Now, watching Khar and his brothers, she understood at once.
This was not an enemy they all walked away from.
Khar moved first. He shoved his gold-horned brother hard in the back.
“Aros. Take Lily and go. I’ll hold it.”
The brothers traded another look, thick with meaning. They accepted the order.
The silver-horned brother headed toward the hangar exit. Aros, the one with gold guards, went straight for Lily.
The Colossus moved.
In one casual motion it hunted the cockroach creature down and crushed it into pulp.
Then it paused and turned slowly, scanning the hangar as if calculating which of them posed the greatest threat.
Lily felt, in her bones, that against the force this walking weapon represented, they had no chance.
Aros reached her with speed that did not match his size. Before Lily could say a word, he leaned down to Horos, shifted her foot aside, and snapped Horos’s neck with a sickening crack.
Lily flinched.
Aros did not give her time for even a sound. He seized her wrist and ran, dragging her from cover to cover, forcing her to stay low as he drove them toward the hangar exit and the smugglers’ ship.
Lily tried to look back, tried to understand what was happening with Khar and the Colossus, but Aros refused to let her stop.
The sounds behind them made it clear that everything before had been child’s play.
Near the exit there was no more cover. They would have to sprint the last stretch.
Aros peeked over a crate.
This time Lily refused to let him block her view. She lifted her head too.
The hangar was in ruins. The Colossus had smashed anything in its path. The smuggler boss, who had shrugged off every attack before, now lay in two pieces on opposite sides of the deck.
Horos’s body was still mostly intact, though fallen crates had pinned his legs beneath them, likely pulverizing the bones.
Khar was moving, fast and precise, leaping over debris, drawing the Colossus away from the exit.
When he hit the far wall, Lily’s chest clenched.
A dead end.
Then Khar began to climb.
Catlike, his claws found every seam, every grip, every ledge as he angled toward the antigrav crane overhead.
Lily’s mind flashed with hope. Maybe they could trap the Colossus with it. Maybe.
