Eluni rests a hand on my shoulder. “Popped the cherry girl. You lived to talk about it.”
“I feel ill.”
“I know. But we have to keep moving. Focus on the next one. There will be more.”
We hurry around a corner toward the main hangar. Well, Eluni jogs. I’m still trying to tamp down the memory of my bullet taking life.
A huge Denarsoan soldier barrels at us from the ship that’s managed to slip inside Amphiran shields.
He crashes into Eluni, throws her to the floor despite her electric arcs, bares his teeth, and goes for her neck.
She’s going to die!And yet she doesn’t scream. She fights.
I scramble and fire at him, tagging him once. He whips his head at me and snarls. I fire three more times, each one knocking me more off balance until I fall on my ass and drop the gun.
“Eluni!”
“I’m good. I’m okay!” She crawls out from under his smoking body, gives me a hand, and helps me up. “Come on.”
“Who let them in?” I ask, picking up the rifle.
She slows as we continue into the hangar big enough for fifty fighters, where gunfire and arcs light up the walls. “What?”
“Who let them in?” I reiterate.
Eluni’s expression is unreadable, but she calls out on her wristband for Talros to meet us by a control station.
We weave across the hangar deck, ducking between fighting squads of Denarso and Amphirans. Nearly a hundred Denarso have taken over the deck, and the Genesis soldiers, a green stripe painted over one shoulder, strain to hold them back. The air is a laser lacework littered with warping pulses and fragmenting metal, shouts, and growls.
We’re almost to the desk when a familiar voice calls out, “I found Bakka!”
Jorusk, in the middle of the fight, out on the floor of the hangar, grabs a Denarso by the collar of his suit, flames up a fist, and smashes it into Bakka’s face. At a crack, Jorusk lets him fall, then heats up his hand again until it catches fire.
A Denarso charges at Jorusk. I lift my rifle and fire. He falls to the floor near Jorusk’s feet.
“For our females. Enaenev afara!” Jorusk’s body catches fire, making many Amphirans and Denarsoans alike run from him. He buries his fist to the wrist inside the Denarsoan, charring him from the inside out. “Justice served! Stay dead this time, creep!”
The body falls to ash.
I’m not sure I heard him right. “Staydead?”
Eluni grabs the shoulder of my armor and lugs me after her. “Yeah, they are super healers. You know, like those lizards on your planet that can grow limbs and tails back? Denarso have this bad habit of coming back to life. You must obliterate their core. Not their brain. Their core. Even if they’re brain dead, their core will keep them alive and work like a beacon, summoning rescue ships.”
“Effective,” I remark. “And terrifying.”
“No doubt.” Eluni looks over a screen as Talros runs up to us. Jorusk stands guard, so I try to do the same, shooting at the Denarso that I can.
“We got separated from the other two in the battle,” Talros says, then looks over the screen Eluni’s working on. He points. “Is that a code for something?”
“Son of a bitch.” Eluni steps back and growls. “How could he?”
“He has to be here somewhere,” Talros says. “That’s a local system, right?”
“Who?” I ask.
Eluni’s eyes fill with light. “Ijor. He has found another way to torture me.” She steps off the control podium and lifts a hand at an approaching Denarso, frying his core with a pulse like he’s a pesky fly she’s swatting away.
Jorusk steps out of her way, glances at us, then follows her. “New mission?”
