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“Takte!” he curses, looking over our shoulders.
I don’t dare follow his gaze.
Malix is beside me now, faster in a panic with his long legs. He scoops me up by the arm and practically tosses me onboard mycaltan, then mounts his own.
“Go!” I shout.
The creatures don’t need any other direction to flee, even though they must be even more exhausted than we are.
They skim through shallow water across the isthmus, taking us into the crimson expanse of the Traikan Sea. A spray of water goes up around us, soaking my hair and clothes as I scramble to find my sniper rifle. I mount it on my shoulder and turn around, but I almost drop it when I see what’s in pursuit.
Not just the weapon—that whirring, buzzing orb that looks like the one that killed a populated moon—even though that would be dangerous enough.
This bomb has soldiers behind it.
Skoropi on winged creatures that look like pterodactyls fly through the air, crossbows mounted on their arms. There are five of them, all wearing the red and black bandoliers of the Second House. They fire on us, and I see a bolt get dangerously close to hitting Taraven as hiscaltanglides across the water.
I’m going to fucking lose it, this is bad, bad bad…
No—this isn’t bad.
This is good.
This will help me focus.
I mount my sniper on my shoulder, narrow my eyes. The ride is bumpy, but I’ve spent a lot of my life on boats—this won’t be a problem at all. I close one eye and aim…
Boom.
My bullet bores into the head of the front rider, and I quickly move a new round to the chamber. I hear a pop near my head, and glance over just in time to catch sight of another crossbow bolt shattering in the air beside me. Malix is on the other side of it, his kinetic pistol in his hand.
“Focus on the bomb!” he says over comms.
I nod. Look back again.
Aim.
I miss this time, and let out a growl of frustration. The orb is only moving about as fast as thecaltan, but I think it’s getting closer bit by bit. I don’t know what will happen if it reaches us—if it will rip us apart from the inside, destroy our sense of reality, remake us into some new and horrible shape. I don’t want to let the fear get to me, but I’m fucking terrified.
“You’ve got this, Frankie,” Taraven’s voice says in my ear.
“You are a skilled warrior,” Malix’s says.
Get your hustle on, cabrona.
I point, aim, and shoot.
I hit.
The device wavers for a moment, and then the whole world seems to stop. It buzzes loudly, horribly—the noise of a thousand bees in my mind. ThecaltanI’m riding stutters in its glide through the water, slowing down like it’s forgotten where it is.
The bomb goes off.
I throw myself to the basket and feel myself suddenly submerged in a thin layer of water as thecaltandescends under the surface. Or…no, that’s not right. We’re not descending. The water islifting, gravity going funny like it did on Raza-896. I blink and look around as droplets rise toward the bomb, my form frozen in horror.
Tendrils of darkness spin out of the bomb and wrap around the Second House soldiers, dragging them closer. It pulls them in, twists them, molds them. They scream until they can’t, until they’re remade into something new as their bodies lose all sense of reality.
Then I’m thrown backward, my head hitting the edge of the basket hard as silence falls.
