Page 77 of Starfighter’s Salvation

A sealed bulkhead blocked the next corridor. Darius tore it off its hinges with one armored fist and tossed it aside like a lid.

Lily ripped the cargo door out of its frame behind us and held it up as a shield.

“I have always wanted to do that,” she said.

“Focus,” Darius said.

“I am. I’m also having fun.”

The mark grew hotter as we descended, past warm, past comfortable, like a burning piece of coal just under my skin. At the collapsed cradle junction, half the ceiling had come down across the corridor. Beyond it, rifle fire cracked in short, brutal bursts. Return fire answered. One weapon. Just one.

Darius studied the wreckage. “If I pull that plate, the rest of the ceiling comes down.”

“Then I’ll go under it.”

“Gina—”

“There’s a gap.” I was already on my stomach. “Keep them off me.”

I crawled. The medical kit caught twice, and my armor shrieked against the metal. Twenty meters of darkness and wreckage and the sound of my own breath, and the bond roaring so loudly in my skull that I stopped hearing the gunfire. I shoved the kit ahead of me and pulled myself out into the corridor.

Smoke. Shell casings. A barricade built from cargo plates, glowing orange where enemy rounds had hit them.

Corvan sat behind it with a rifle across his knees.

Alive. I catalogued him the way I catalogued every trauma. Burned along one shoulder. Blood soaking his side. One arm bound against his chest with a rifle sling. A gash above his left eye, bleeding into his lashes. Gray face. Except no patient had ever wrecked me by opening his eyes and finding mine.

“You’re late,” he said.

My knees hit the floor beside him. “Traffic. Somebody parked a war in the hallway.”

“We're pinned down here. There are five over there.” He didn’t look away from the barricade. “Two more are circling the east side. Mia’s retreat order never reached them.” His good hand tightened on the rifle. “I have two rounds left.”

“Corvan—”

A shape lunged out of the smoke.

A soldier. Fast. He vaulted the end of the barricade with his weapon already rising, his eyes locked on Corvan’s exposed side. Corvan swung the rifle up and I saw it, the half-second his injured shoulder cost him. Too slow. Too slow by a heartbeat.

I did not think.

I drew my sidearm. The grip fit my palm. The sight settled on the center of the man’s chest. I had spent my entire life putting people back together, and in that one stretched second I made the decision as calmly as I’d make any triage call.

This one dies. Corvan lives.

My finger tightened and I pulled the trigger. The attacker went flying, but my aim was terrible. He was already scrambling to regain his feet. I raised my pistol again.

A hand closed over mine.

Not hard. Gently, which was somehow worse. Corvan’s palm covered my fingers and pressed the barrel down, and his eyes met mine, dark and steady.

“No,” he said.

“He’s going to⁠—”

“Not you.”

He lifted his rifle one-handed, braced the barrel on his knee, and fired.