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That said, as that had been the cue Jaek had given me as to when to give the signal, I opened my mouth to speak. To my shock, Jake grabbed my hand and gave it a firm squeeze, which I understood to be his way of telling me to keep my peace.
I gave him a questioning sideways glance. He smiled in a reassuring way. Confused, I obeyed, wondering what had changed. Sure, I welcomed any additional minute we could grant Keran to get here, but I also had a duty to protect our friends. To my dismay, Deimos didn’t even bother to greet us or pretend to be a charming host. Instead, he went for it.
“I understand that you have declined my hospitality,” Deimos said, his voice cold. “It is rather rude. Allow me to insist.”
“Insist all you want, the answer is no,” Vintor replied in a harsh tone. “Frankly, you’re the one being rude trying to impose your supposed customs on us and coerce us to do something that could potentially be detrimental to us and counter to everything we’ve been taught. This is increasingly starting to feel like a bad idea. Maybe you’re not the person we want to associate with.”
The others loudly expressed their agreement with Vintor’s words. Deimos’s face hardened as his gaze roamed over the attendance. I braced as soon as his icy blue eyes began to glow.
“Take the glasses that will be passed to you and drink,”Deimos commanded with his vibrating voice.
It wasn’t until the tingling failed to manifest itself and an air of outrage descended over my companions’ faces that I realized I’d been holding my breath.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Vintor hissed, jumping to his feet. “Have you forgotten that we are Braxians?”
Many of the others also rose, their muscles bulging with anger.
Cold fury settled over Deimos’s frighteningly beautiful face as he turned his gaze towards Jaek. The condemnation within couldn’t be more obvious.
“Confirming my suspicions,” Deimos answered Vintor, although he continued to stare at Jaek. “I wanted to believe you were smart enough to do the right thing. You would have had a good life, with the female you coveted—even though she’s meant for another. But now, we’re going to do it my way… the hard way.”
Even as fear filled my heart at the thought he likely nipped Keran’s escape attempt in the bud, an even greater dread crashed over me as his words appeared to have been the signal the armed Guldans and Sarenians had been waiting for.
To my horror, more Guldans and Sarenians started pouring into the room from the back. The ones on each side of our seats activated their armor. Using a technology similar to the one from the Tuureans—the elite military of the Veredians—the armor deployed from their weapons belt. It looked like black oil spreading all over their bodies to form an impenetrable shell around them before hardening. Obviously, it was an optical illusion. In fact, the suit was composed of small hexagonal shells that connected with each other like puzzle pieces to form the suit. While theirs would undoubtedly make them harder to defeat, the metal they used couldn’t even begin to compete with the celesium armor of the Veredians. No metal in the galaxy was as tough and impenetrable as celesium.
Moving as one, my companions lunged at the nearest Guldans or Sarenians. The ones in the front row tried to go after Deimos on the dais, but the son of a krillik erected some kind of protective energy shield that sealed off access to the stage from all sides, the shield going up to the ceiling. As I feared, the hybrids closest to the edges were shot before they could land a first blow. Some of them collapsed on their shooter, pinning them to the ground. Despite the fear I felt for them, knowing they were getting stunned instead of killed went a long way into allowing me to focus on a way for us to get the upper hand.
But that too was cut short.
Although chaos erupted at lightning speed, everything appeared to move in slow motion, from the first man getting shot to the Sarenians lobbing a few spheres over our seats. Jaek and I barely managed to move a couple of steps forward before we saw the spheres flying above us. In the split second it took me to understand what they were, Jaek’s strong arms wrapped around me. The floor rushed towards me as he tackled me before sheltering me with his body. Sharp pain exploded in my left shoulder as I banged it against the corner of one of the seats. But that pain was soon forgotten, replaced by a brutal stabbing sensation in my ear from the violent blast of the concussion grenades that went off above us.
All around me, the men grunted or cried out in pain. Despite the high pitch ringing in my ears and the wave of dizziness trying to swallow me, I heard the muffled thumping sounds of bodies collapsing all around me.
This can’t be happening!
By the way Jaek’s body went limp, crushing me, the explosion had knocked him unconscious. As its effects wouldn’t last, I needed to protect Jaek long enough for him and the others to recover. Placing my palms on the floor, I pushed up to get him off me, but not so roughly as to draw attention our way. He rolled to the side, freeing me.
I lifted my head to find myself staring at the calves of my friend Rikku. A sea of bodies half slumped on the floor or over their chairs surrounded me. At the end of the rows on both sides, the Sarenians were injecting the unconscious men with what I assumed to be a functional version of the mind control serum. Still standing on the sidelines like a bunch of cowards, the Guldans kept their weapons trained on us, stunning anyone who appeared to be recovering from the concussion blast.
Remaining flat on my stomach, I discreetly fumbled with my dress to retrieve the makeshift blade Jaek had made for me. An almost eerie silence had descended over the room, only disturbed by the occasional sound of a blaster going off, the grunt of one of my companions, and the shuffling sound of bodies being turned to be injected.
Heart pounding, I waited for the Sarenian injecting the people in my row to get closer to my position. Still sheltering behind the energy shield on the stage, Deimos was attempting to contact someone on his com. By his shocked and angry reaction, he had likely received some bad news. Was it Keran? Had Deimos just found out that the purebloods had managed to escape?
But Rikku’s body getting shifted reminded me the time to act was upon me. Keeping my head down to appear unconscious, I could only see the legs of the Sarenian. In their arrogance, the Sarenians had not activated their armor like the Guldans. While their armor still had vulnerabilities that could be exploited, it would have made it harder for me to inflict a disabling or fatal blow.
I would make this son of a krillik regret the day he fucked with us.
As soon as he bowed down to brush my hair away from my neck, I burst into action. I whipped my head up and to the side, slamming the back of my skull hard on his face. Even through the lingering dampening of my hearing due to the concussion grenade, I heard the glorious sound of crunching bones as I broke his nose. His grunt of pain died in a gurgling sound as I buried my blade in his throat, which he had kindly exposed to me in his instinctive reaction of pulling his head back and away from the source of pain.
Alarmed shouts resonated all around when our would-be captors saw blue blood gushing out of their acolyte’s neck. Two Guldans trained their blasters on me. I barely had time to yank the dying Sarenian in front of me as a meat shield. Even as I reached for his blaster still sheathed in his belt, countless hybrids—who had apparently also been biding their time to fight back—jumped into action.
Although a few of them still got shot before they could get out of their seating row, quite a few made it off, aided by the fact that the Guldans hesitated to shoot because of the Sarenians standing on the bleachers with us.
I had no such qualms.
Crouching behind the now dead Sarenian as cover, I shot at as many Guldans as I could, especially the ones targeting our conscious men. But their fucking armor dampened the damage, even after I’d set the weapon to lethal. Despite not killing them outright, it caused enough pain to throw them off their game and give my companions a slight edge.
With everyone still able to move having jumped off the bleachers, the battle moved to the entrance, the more open space making hand to hand combat easier. But the odds didn’t play in our favor. Their weapons and armor gave them an unfair advantage. For each Guldan or Sarenian our side managed to kill, ten of us got knocked down or stunned.
