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Flash. Throw.

“Ouch!”

I leaped at that sound, coming out of the hyperjump in a bull rush and smashing her against the wall.

Wow,M-Bot said in my head, his voice strong.Spensa. I had no idea you could move like that.

I was a blur. A person between two worlds, continuously slipping from one to the other. Brade began firing wildly around the room,hitting her own people, her equipment, increasingly frantic as I grabbed panels off the walls—ripping the metal squares free by touching them, then teleporting them around her. They clanged as they landed, obscuring her view, always there when she jumped.

Then I was among them. Hitting her in the kidney again, then grabbing her gun and teleporting it away. Then grabbing her and sendingherinto the vacuum.

She came back a second later, of course. But she seemed panicked, disoriented. I leaped for her, growling, as if I were some feral beast—half human, half delver. I—

She got a shot off and grazed me on the shoulder. Her pistol? Where had that come from? I’d teleported it out into the vacuum…

Oh. Right.

Maybe sending her to the same spot hadn’t been my smartest move. Fortunately, the pain only focused my fury, and I threw her to the ground. When she hyperjumped, I teleported into the air just above her and fell down on her prone form, slamming an elbow into her face.

When she hyperjumped away this time, she left blood on the floor.

“You bastard!” she shouted as she appeared again, the broken desk between us. “You half-civilized, miserable excuse for—”

She cut off as I appeared and—using the same move I’d performed on Jorgen all those months ago—slammed my fist into her knee and dropped her. I went for her throat again, knowing I could outlast her. She was stronger, had more resources, but I. Would.Never.Stop.

I was vengeance incarnate. I was death. I—

A flash bathed the room in blue light.

At first I kept fighting, thinking it was some distraction. Then I heard the radio chatter, the calls of victory from the enemy generals and ships. I saw the smile on Brade’s face, her split lip trailing blood, victory in her eyes.

“Didn’t you say,” she asked me, “that your grandmother was on that ship?”

I looked again, focusing on the hologram, watching as the flashes built up: bursts of light announcing the final demise of an enormous capital ship.

TheDefiantwas exploding.

46

JORGEN

Jorgen was left with the image of Becca Nightshade settling down into the captain’s chair of theDefiant.Confident. Smiling. That was the last transmission from the bridge as the ship went up.

He saluted the blank wall as, beside him in the hologram, theDefiantdied. Somber kitsen hovered up around him on platforms, over a dozen of them, and they offered a salute that he’d never seen before. A knife out, held up to the side, heads bowed. A final farewell to a warrior who died in glory.

Personally, he’d never fully subscribed to the Defiant attitude of sacrifice among his people. He found it uncomfortable sometimes how they celebrated death—and he knew for a fact it had led to the untimely demise of people he’d loved. But today, he thought he understood it. Rebecca Nightshade hadn’t thrown her life away.

No ship was allowed, by galactic law and deep internal programming, to fly itself. No AI could be allowed to give commands or perform maneuvers without someone on the bridge.

So she’d remained defiant in the face of overwhelming odds. In so doing, she’d given them all something amazing.

A chance.

The entire complement of the anti-planetary-bombardment platforms around Detritus vanished. Hyperjumping, as the captive slugs gave them the opportunity, into the tiny column of open space behind the dying flagship. Gun emplacements that now hung in space, exposed.

But they didn’t need protection. Because the enemy had committed all of its ships—carriers, destroyers, gunships, and fighters—to attack. They were lined up. Completely distracted by taking their prize.

“All guns,” Jorgen announced, lowering his arm from the salute,“FIRE.”