Chapter 18: Esthi
A flaming mass slams into my chest with force, throwing me against the shut door of the munitions core.
I pick up my rifle, fire loosely at him, miss, and take out the copilot.
He glances back, sees the man down, turns, and charges at me. I push off the wall, knowing I have a chance at comparable force with the weight of the suit.
He rears back a fist with a blade, so I duck and crash into his middle. We tumble back to the floor. His knife skitters away as a soldier comes in from the starboard gunners’ bay and fires at me, sending sparking flares of heat up my side toward my head.
Shit!Rolling onto my back, I frantically fire back at him.
Arius enters from the first bay and takes the soldier out with a headshot, then gets in a scuffle with another gunner from the starboard rail. They tumble off the deck and into the gunners’ row.
Uncle Lieth punches me in the face, sending a pounding wave through my skull as it bangs around inside my helmet. I take a kick to the suit that launches me away from him.
Get up! I have to get up.
Myria would get up.
I blink hard and force my eyes open. I’m on limited oxygen with my suit down and open my helmet to get my breath back.
My uncle’s already on his feet, another foot swinging at my head.Crap!I throw myself to the floor and tumble away from him as the ship cants to its starboard side. I get my feet under me. Blood drips from my split lip.
“Turned on your people?” He says it with such malice that I think he genuinely believes he and all other traitorousCSP soldiers are superior to Titans, and I am the scourge on humanity for staying true. But he has it all backward.
I draw my handgun and fire three times at him. It hits a shield. I’m not surprised.
“Solcruean shielding,” I snarl. “Youare worst of all enemies.”
He laughs, pauses, then laughs harder. “They are superior in space. They thrive while we suffer. I’ve merely worked out a deal so the best of us can have a future.”
“We suffer because of them and because they take and trash and move on. Humans are expendable to them. Including you.” I know because I’ve been on Solcruean vessels for a decade and seen the way they treat our kind. “Torture and rape is not a future I want for humanity.
“Andyou— You helped Solcrue pick the people they took. You sold your soul, selling us to them.”
“How can you choose Titans over your own descendants?” he asks. “They’re machines. Solcrue are flesh.”
“How can you? I choose to stand with those who stand by me. You betrayed our people, our camp, ourfamily.”
This gets his attention.
“I have a bone to pick with you, and I’m planning to cut it out of your body myself, just so I can stab you with it again and again,” I confess in a weak moment. My plans are falling apart mostly because I didn’t really have anything but a goal, and I’m at the height of figuring it out as I go.
Uncle Lieth still doesn’t recognize me. It’s been over a decade since I saw him last. I’ve grown. He looks the same.
“Seems that you like machines more than you want to admit,” I say, drawing the zembi from my belt. It’s the only weapon I have that can penetrate his shield. I can’t go into a hand-to-hand battle with him and win, not even with all the training and the fueling anger I carry inside. The dead-weight suit is too heavy.
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you know what they turned some of our kind into?”
“Wrecktanks.”
So he does know what Myria became. Arius mentioned Erdox when he spoke with Talrux. “Ran into Lenarro.”
My uncle stands frozen like the name doesn’t register.
“And Myria, what’s left of her.”
