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“Healing always does.”
He leaned down and kissed me on the lips. No passion, just pure love.
“I’m going to get us out of here,” he said. “The ride might get a little bumpy. I’m going to strap you in as best I can. It might be a bit uncomfortable.”
I nodded. He wrapped the straps around my stomach, waist, and shins.
He dashed over to the pilot seat. When he turned the lights on, they illuminated an army of Changelings rushing through the endless cargo hold corridors toward us.
They raised their weapons and opened fire.
The shuttlecraft shuddered as it took the blows.
“Hold on!” Dyrel bellowed.
He spun the controls, throwing the shuttlecraft’s ass out and striking a stack of crates. They spilled over and cascaded like a wave down on the Changelings.
The ship bolted forward and collided with a dozen other Changelings. They carried blowtorches and wore special suits as they finished patching up the hole they’d made in the cargo hold’s wall. It glowed yellow, still hot from the heat.
And still soft.
“Direct all power to the front shields,” Dyrel said.
He increased speed and zipped toward that orange section of wall. The Changeling engineers turned their welding tools on. They glowed so hot they turned white, and struck at the shuttlecraft when it passed close.
Dyrel took us headlong into the wall.
It took the blow and didn’t break.
Dyrel growled and hit reverse.
The shuttlecraft shuddered as it took more strikes from the Changelings’ welding gear. And behind us, the Changelings scrambled over the crates and opened fire. Bolts of multi-colored plasma screamed past our ears.
“Hold on!” Dyrel said.
We shot forward.
The straps on my legs shifted position and pressed on my broken leg. I screamed in pain and almost lost consciousness.
The shuttlecraft smashed once again into the wall. Through the windshield, I watched as the metal cracked, then splintered. It tore open like a wound and sucked us into space, along with a handful of crates that’d been knocked from their fastenings, and dozens of Changelings that opened fire as they spun end over end into space.
We were free.
Dyrel angled the shuttlecraft toward his planet and, within minutes, we were burning up in its atmosphere.
Dyrel took no prisoners when he zipped through the atmosphere and flew—fell, really—directly into his city.
My breath wheezed in my chest. I thought my ribs might have driven into my lungs. I could barely gasp each beleaguered breath.
Hearing my distressed breathing, Dyrel called a doctor and told him to meet us at his apartment.
He zeroed in on his apartment building. By the time he sat the shuttlecraft down, it was half-melted, with multiple holes in its hull, and hissed with fire.
He placed me on his bed and fell to his knees beside me. It felt strange to be back there. Surreal, as if I’d stepped into a dream.
He opened a chest of drawers and grabbed a T-shirt. He dumped a glass of water over it and used it to dab at my feverish forehead.
I think he feared as much as I did that despite his heroic efforts, this might well end up being the end.
