Page 20

A flaming mass slams into my chest with force, throwing me against the shut door of the munitions core.

I pick up my rifle, fire loosely at him, miss, and take out the copilot.

He glances back, sees the man down, turns, and charges at me. I push off the wall, knowing I have a chance at comparable force with the weight of the suit.

He rears back a fist with a blade, so I duck and crash into his middle. We tumble back to the floor. His knife skitters away as a soldier comes in from the starboard gunners’ bay and fires at me, sending sparking flares of heat up my side toward my head.

Shit! Rolling onto my back, I frantically fire back at him.

Arius enters from the first bay and takes the soldier out with a headshot, then gets in a scuffle with another gunner from the starboard rail. They tumble off the deck and into the gunners’ row.

Uncle Lieth punches me in the face, sending a pounding wave through my skull as it bangs around inside my helmet. I take a kick to the suit that launches me away from him.

Get up! I have to get up.

Myria would get up.

I blink hard and force my eyes open. I’m on limited oxygen with my suit down and open my helmet to get my breath back.

My uncle’s already on his feet, another foot swinging at my head. Crap! I throw myself to the floor and tumble away from him as the ship cants to its starboard side. I get my feet under me. Blood drips from my split lip.

“Turned on your people?” He says it with such malice that I think he genuinely believes he and all other traitorous CSP soldiers are superior to Titans, and I am the scourge on humanity for staying true. But he has it all backward.

I draw my handgun and fire three times at him. It hits a shield. I’m not surprised.

“Solcruean shielding,” I snarl. “ You are worst of all enemies.”

He laughs, pauses, then laughs harder. “They are superior in space. They thrive while we suffer. I’ve merely worked out a deal so the best of us can have a future.”

“We suffer because of them and because they take and trash and move on. Humans are expendable to them. Including you.” I know because I’ve been on Solcruean vessels for a decade and seen the way they treat our kind. “Torture and rape is not a future I want for humanity.

“And you — You helped Solcrue pick the people they took. You sold your soul, selling us to them.”

“How can you choose Titans over your own descendants?” he asks. “They’re machines. Solcrue are flesh.”

“How can you? I choose to stand with those who stand by me. You betrayed our people, our camp, our family .”

This gets his attention.

“I have a bone to pick with you, and I’m planning to cut it out of your body myself, just so I can stab you with it again and again,” I confess in a weak moment. My plans are falling apart mostly because I didn’t really have anything but a goal, and I’m at the height of figuring it out as I go.

Uncle Lieth still doesn’t recognize me. It’s been over a decade since I saw him last. I’ve grown. He looks the same.

“Seems that you like machines more than you want to admit,” I say, drawing the zembi from my belt.

It’s the only weapon I have that can penetrate his shield.

I can’t go into a hand-to-hand battle with him and win, not even with all the training and the fueling anger I carry inside. The dead-weight suit is too heavy.

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t you know what they turned some of our kind into?”

“Wrecktanks.”

So he does know what Myria became. Arius mentioned Erdox when he spoke with Talrux. “Ran into Lenarro.”

My uncle stands frozen like the name doesn’t register.

“And Myria, what’s left of her.”

A cheek twitches.

I fling open the zembi blade and ignite it with a button on the handle. Then I pull my goggles onto my forehead and look my uncle in the eye. He’s several paces out of reach but close enough that I can see his lips part in shock.

“What?” I taunt. “Didn’t think I’d survive long enough to get vengeance for our camp, for your brother and my father, for Myria, and all the others whose lives you filled with the worst agony imaginable?”

“You’re a Gray?”

“You were . Father was. Yrais would’ve been if you hadn’t sold him out. Myria was a Creator. You had to know I’d follow in their steps as the last of our family, the one you betrayed for your hide that I’m going to puncture and let bleed out all over this mutated planet.”

He shakes his head. “But you were so innocent, so quiet.”

I smirk. “You should always worry more about those of us who don’t often speak but just listen. We hear everything . We feel so much more because we have to bottle it inside. We see the play pieces on the board. And we are a force no one expects. That is the life of a true Gray.”

He takes a step toward me. “You shouldn’t be…”

“Here?” I yell, losing my temper. I have thought about this moment for over a decade and all the millions of ways I could end him. “I am here because of you! They turned my hero into a monster! She doesn’t even recognize me anymore!”

Veins swell in my face with the fury behind my words. “You gave thousands of families the same pain! You are the virus!” I spin the zembi into a ready position as I charge at him.

And I am the only remedy.

My uncle punches a button behind him, opening hatches in the sides of the vessel and creating a turbulent storm of air that pushes me around and makes reaching him nearly impossible. The magnets in my boots switch on, locking me in place through a backup battery.

I grab a support pillar and hold my ground as red alert lights glaze over the ship. My uncle watches me fight my way to him like he fully expects me to fail.

But he has no idea how strong the grip of vengeance can be. I strain for another step and another.

Metal clunks behind me. I look back.

A Titan boards. Storm gleams in dark blue on his chest. His eyes find mine. His body morphs into an array of spinning blades that calm the air.

Another Titan lands inside, dressed in a Starjumper’s suit. Karambit drops in with Menace, Mace, Diesel, Redline, Fury, and finally, the one I want to see more than anything.

Armor lands and folds his wings back. He moves to the front of the pack, finds me, and starts in my direction. “Esthielle—”

A CSP soldier swings a pulseblade in his direction.

For a moment, my heart catches in my throat.

But Armor is faster, disarming him and crushing him to the floor.

Armor gets up, adjusts his wings back into position, and keeps moving toward us.

Behind him, Titans pour into the gunners’ rails.

Sounds of heavy hits and grunts fill the ship.

I look back at my uncle, whose eyes bear the wide realization that this is his end. His superiority was only an illusion created by the shields and barriers he kept around him.

Today, I have my own shield.

“It makes me sad,” I tell my uncle.

“What?”

“That I have to kill you to save you.”

He chuckles once, nervously.

I shrug. “If I don’t, they will. Either way, this time, we win.”

My uncle squints at me like he’s got an idea of a way out.

I can’t wait. Whatever is on his mind is a threat to the ones I protect now.

My heart races as I sprint toward him with all the energy I can muster. I push my legs hard to get to him before he grabs whatever he’s reaching for. But it isn’t him who holds the gun.

His pilot, a soldier with green hexagonal scales, lifts a large rifle that he aims over my uncle’s shoulder. I dive like I remember Javelin doing, making myself as narrow as possible.

I will end you if it’s the last thing I do.

The gun kicks, punching out a horrid blast as I drive the zembi into my uncle. The light makes me close my eyes. My ears and my skull ring from the percussion wave as I tumble onto my dying uncle in the cockpit.

“No!” I scream, looking back as the massive ball of green fire races toward Armor, who’s pulling his wings in front of himself and his brothers.

The blast crashes into him and throws Armor into his brothers.

A vehemence I’ve never known boils up in me.

I scramble up from my uncle, yank the blade out of him, and slash at the Solcrue, who throws himself back and whips his gun toward me.

I clamber over the copilot’s body and thrust my hot blade into him.

It slips into his shoulder with surprising ease.

The soldier cries out and drops the gun.

Anger makes me twist the handle.

He winces, convulses, and blacks out.

When I turn around, I see Menace look up from a body on the main deck. Olive blood drips from his mouth. Another Solcrue in a CSP uniform lies at his feet. Karambit isn’t far away. He lowers the body of a human CSP soldier. It slides off of his knife-shaped fingers to the floor.

“Armor?”

Diesel’s connected to Armor’s coal-dusted chest. “Hang on.”

Fury lugs the bodies out of the cockpit and takes the pilot’s seat. “Redline, take out the trash?”

“Yes, Mom .” A red-hot unit collects the bodies of my uncle and the two pilots and throws them out of the open doors in a flash.

Once my uncle and the other bodies have fallen to the dunes, Fury slaps a button and closes the side hatches. Storm whirs to a stop and returns to a humanoid shape.

Armor gasps in the arms of Redline and Diesel and gets to his feet. “Esthi?”

As I approach him, he snatches me up.

“I thought we’d lost you forever,” he says.

“You got balls, Esthi,” Menace remarks. “Sefina is going to like having you around. She is a Sentinel. I hear you are a Gray.”

I nod and savor the feeling of Armor’s arms around me. Armor and his Titans are my family now. Myria isn’t herself. My uncle is dead like the rest of my family. They are all I have left.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

Armor kisses my forehead. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. I was not thinking straight.”

“You were emotional.”

“Yes. We came to get you. Commander Savage’s orders.” Metal hits the roof. Then again and again.

“I joined for the fun of it.” Redline punches sideways and knocks out a Solcrue as they exit a nearby door. “Menace sent his payload to Marst and Vessna on returning Skysprinters. So a few of us were in the area.”

Savage drops to the deck from an overhead ladder. Behind him, Turbo, Shifter, and Rebel drop inside.

“Esthi, Scythe is an impressive claim. We are honored to have you with us,” Commander Savage says.

“BlazeStar is about to break free,” Shifter reports. “Rock falling now.”

Fury banks us toward the mountain. “Arius?”

“Ready,” my old friend shouts from the munitions bay.

Guns come online, lighting up in the port and starboard rails, which Titans eagerly rush to.

Fury whoops. “Let’s take out Venom squadron and see how they like EMPs!”

Rebel turns to me. “Arius needs medical attention. Are we helping him or leaving him?”

I motion for him to help Arius. “He’s from my camp. Here under false pretenses.”

Arius enters the main cabin, tears the badge from his chest, throws it down, and crushes it under the heel of his good foot.

“Status of the Cerebus drop?” Savage asks.

Menace points out the window at a falling ship, and we all look. “ Marst is going to eat shit in ten…nine…”

As Marst plummets to Ellipsis, Fury reports, “ Vessna is powering down in the Iridithatium belt!”

Menace grins, wipes blood from his face, and says, “Two out of three ain’t bad.

I didn’t send my pack to Corenge because I didn’t think they’d win.

But Vessna should succumb to Ellipsis’ gravity soon and give any survivors a chance on Ellipsis the way we had.

Then we’ll just have Corenge’s ship to deal with during lift-off. ”

“We better get Mother free soon,” Fury calls back with urgency. “Another Solcruean mothership just dropped into orbit. It’s circling toward us now.”

Savage swears and paces. “They’re early. Okay, I want everyone on guard for the BlazeStar. Nothing gets through our shield. Pull in the females on pilot duty. We need to tighten the perimeter and protect our most important asses.”

“ Asses , sir?” Mace asks.

Savage waves a dismissive hand. “Assets! Assets . Sorry. Leah…”

The mated Titans all look similarly stressed, a level above Shifter, Turbo, Mace, and Karambit.

I close up my zembi and attach it to my belt. “I think I have an idea of how to get the BlazeStar out of here in one piece. I need whoever is best with portal tech to come with me.”