When I burst into the escape pod wing, I see a woman’s hatch on her pod isn’t sealing. The others have ejected. She’s crying and frantically tapping the release button as an enemy soldier charges toward her.
I draw my handgun and fire at him, knock him back around a support beam with a ball of red fury, then slam to a stop and assess her screen. It has an error code for a hydraulics malfunction on the door from another blast. I manually shut it and tap Eject. The hull seals. Marst closes the airlock. On the other side, I see her praying as she belts in. The pod launches her into space.
A yellow bullet singes my jacket, making me duck and turn to look. Another shot whizzes so close to my face that I feel the heat and hear the fizzling of the chemical reaction. Solcrue bullets are actually quite beautiful when they’re not flying at my head. Their sodium-laced fragmenting crystal projectiles don’t penetrate hulls, only flesh. It’s a smart design for starships.
The soldier switches to war rounds, green bullets filled with toxic Barium Chloride.
I fire back as I continue along the escape pod accesses to the last one at the far end.
Please work. Don’t be broken!
I don’t read the screen. It has a green light overhead, so I fire several shots behind me as I throw myself inside and smash the Eject button.
The hatch seals.Marstcloses the airlock.
I belt myself into the seat and look back to see the soldier who shot at me now watching from the window. The pod launches me into space, and he’s gone, shrinking with the mothership and my inside track on the Solcrue, Myria, everything. All that I have worked toward is gone in one simple tap of a button.
I found my sister, but I didn’t findher.
As space brightens and the surface of Ellipsis nears, I realize I have to change my goals if I’m going to keep going.
Aidathra. If I don’t find her on the surface, and if I live, that’s my next goal.
Titans… Myria said it.Or whoever she is.
I thought Titans were all lost during the war. No one heard of them after we lost. But after I found my way onto a Solcruean transport, it’s all I’ve heard about for the last two years. The jailbreak, two hundred Titans roaming free on Ellipsis, and General Krader’s daughter who is with them now.
Cyborg Submission Patrol failed at their main objective and wants to clean up their mess. And the daughter of a Creator helped with the jailbreak—a woman who is half Solcrue. I know so much from the thousands of transmissions I’ve listened to, and yet I feel unprepared for landing on a planet again, especially one with Titans.
Ahead of me, escape pods flare with heat as they enter Ellipsis’ atmosphere. Minutes pass like seconds, and I trail the others through the burn phase and back to an oxygen-rich environment filled with sunlight, dunes, lakes, and forests. I descend further north than the others as a jet stream kicks me into an angry desert.
Sand curls around my pod, battering the hull until I fear it will crack the glass. I tip and tumble through the dust devil. My harness digs into my shoulders, chest, and crotch as it keeps melocked into my seat. Navigation beeps frantically as the thrusters sputter, trying to correct my position while choking on dust and sand.
Momentum rises, and my pod arcs out of the storm through waves of sand and dim light before smashing into a dune. The hit pummels my body. I smack my head on the dash screen as I skip off the dune and tumble to the bottom. Every muscle tenses as I wait for this disorienting misery to end. And finally, I rock to a stop.
There’s no one remotely close by on the navigation screen before it blinks off. The storm rages around me, so I stay put, gather my things and my wits, and prepare for the hike to find shelter and, hopefully, a Titan sighting.
Navigation beeps with an inbound alert that a Skysprinter is coming to rescue me.
They’ve found me.
I can’t stay where I am.
I put on my goggles for stealth ops and switch them to night vision. Opening the hatch against the wind takes effort, but I push out into the storm. The climb up the desert’s hills toward the forest is slow going and treacherous in the wind. But I finally make it to the nearest tree I can see. Wind dies down in the higher-up trees, and I finally get a good look at the other escapees. They rain fromMarstandVessna.
The Skysprinters swarm the pods that have landed miles away. Three enemy fighters headed straight for my position can’t be a coincidence. They have to know what I’ve done, that I’m the reason the doors opened and their servants escaped. Otherwise, they’d never send anyone after me.
If they catch me, I’ll never find Myria.
It’s a slog, climbing into the forest with all the gear on my body, but I will make it.
I have to. For Myria. For Mom, Dad, and our camp. I can’t let the Solcrue take everything from us. They will eat stardust one day for killing and hurting so many.Until then, I’m taking it one step at a time.
One tree.
One shadowy forest.
One tunnel into a mountain.
Clicking on a flashlight, I switch off my night vision goggles, get my bearing, and head deeper into the rock. I must conserve my strength, supplies, and my wits if I want to succeed. I refuse to die trying. But I’m secretly afraid of dying alone because then all of my travels, sneaking into transports, crawling through metal ship guts, surviving on stolen food, and leaving everything behind will be for nothing.
I will find you, Myria. We will be a family again. You made me promise you. Don’t you remember?
All I hope now is that she saw me there with her and that she knows somewhere deep in her heart that she isn’t alone, even if she’s too far gone to save.
