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Dare I evenattemptit?
Any second now, Joruch’s ship was going to be audible.
Then, out of panic, the scumbag would do whatever he had to.
A calmness came over me at that moment, a peace that I hadn’t known in many, many years.
The kind of inner peace my trainers had instilled in me so I acted without thinking, so I didn’t hesitate as I took someone’s life.
I had lost it when my ex-wife had died and, for the first time since that dreadful day, looking into Layla’s face, it returned to me.
Yes, I thought. Icanmake that shot.
And Iwillmake it.
Becauseshe believesI can.
“The Orb—” the scumbag repeated for about the tenth time.
But as he spoke, he was distracted — perhaps only a fraction of a moment, but it was enough.
I took aim…
And fired.
I was still holding the Blue Orb in front of my pistol.
Even if I had tossed it to him, he would have opened fireon me — or Layla — before it had even completely left my fingertips.
Now the fragile glass-like material broke or, more accurately, disintegrated as it melted beneath the bolt of plasma.
As the plasma was one of the purest, brightest sources of light in the galaxy, it struck the tiny blue gem and exploded with intense turquoise light.
A tendril of white sprouted from the gem in what would be its final-ever performance.
Where Layla had seen a cute little rabbit, my Figment was a full-bodied fire dragon that roared with an intensity as fiery as the Blue Orb itself.
It snaked around the scumbag and Layla, coiling its powerful scales around them like a lover’s embrace.
My bolt of plasma flew straight and true, scorching the air and making it hiss.
The criminal, taken by surprise by the burst of light and even more by the bolt of plasma, hastily pulled his own trigger.
Our bolts of pure energy passed within millimeters of each other.
My shot struck the criminal in his right eye, still wide with shock, and it melted beneath the intense heat of the plasma, and his head began to implode around it, sucked into the fiery furnace.
The scumbag’s shot zipped toward me, delayed by a microsecond and minutely knocked off course by the powerful flash of light.
I had already begun to duck but I didn’t crouch much more than an inch before the bolt screamed past my ear, singing my hair and making it burn, and carving a single notch in my left horn as it passed right through it.
The entire event happened in a fraction of a second but might have lasted a lifetime.
The scumbag’s limbs grew weak and he slumped to his knees.
Only then, when half his brain had been fried, perhaps causing his synapses to fire randomly, creating new pathways and linkages that they hadn’t earlier, a look of recognition came to what remained of his face.
“I… remember you…” he slurred.
