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I am just days away from my Alien Bride Race heat, but Rogue forces have been called out to help an ally caught with their pants down by the Nebulous Empire.

It would be easier to end our current battle with one electric Storm wave and get back to finalizing my plans for the races, but I know it will only make our allies expect it every time we arrive.

Unfortunately, most Amphirans do not carry the Storm I do, or they are so far out of practice due to the Royals’ orders to keep them hidden that they wouldn’t know how to control it if they tried.

And the Vinym need to know how to fight if we can’t make it.

So I lock in a fresh belt of ammunition and tear up the passing berserker the old-fashioned way.

The Nebs’ smoky shields disburse the rapid fire in fractal whorls of blue light, but soon the shield will fall. I know it as the black puffs become erratic, and the blasts from our guns start to hit their marks.

Blaize, my third in command and a pale blue-purple purveyor of punishment, sets up the two Vinym we’re assisting with a rocket launcher.

They’re young, just teens, and have never been in a conflict before.

And they got slammed hard with reality when the empire showed up on their planet.

Without our portal capabilities, we would not have arrived in time to help.

The Vinym fire off the rocket, and we watch it spiral through the air and take out a Neb fighter.

“Whoo, tagged one!” I lift a hand to the teens. Oalo high-fives me first. He’s shorter, more gold in his scaly rainbow flesh than Tro’si, who’s taller and greener in all senses of the word.

They’re both scared. So I try to keep them out of the mental trenches even if I can’t save them from the real one.

A Nebulous troop transport drops soldiers and fires at our defensive perimeter around the Vinym city of Mahon.

I have to give the Vinym credit for their shields, which absorb the attacks with ease.

They might be scrawny bastards that look like iridescent snakes who would rather curl up than attack, but they are intelligent and have engineered some of the sturdiest ships and shields in the galaxy.

I think, before long, they might surpass us if we don’t get our shit together.

The Nebs haven’t shown much effort against the Vinym until now. But it’s clear they want something from the massive 5,000-acre survival vault the Vinym have built. It could be anything from seeds to medicine and instruction manuals, survival tools, and more.

Oalo gets on the coms. “Harden shields! Ground forces approaching!”

Up and down the line, the bubbles switch from green to red. No one can get in, but no one can get out.

“Blaize, with me!” I’m not getting stuck in a shield, unable to fight, and hoist another belt of ammo over my shoulder. Blaize grabs the launcher and case of rockets and follows me out of the trench and into the open. I point back at Oalo. “Hunker down. Shield up.”

The dome around the two teens, barely adults by Amphiran standards, turns red.

Blaize and I are on our own. But when I look down the line, I see Fieri, my second in command, and Vybron, my mentor, leave their shields with their teams, too.

The Rogues, the soldiers of our kind, accept the risk of dying to protect an innocent ally.

Because we are Amphiran, the first species into space in this corner of the universe, it is our sworn duty to protect everyone we can.

Unless you’re my father or any other Royal bastard who has only the Royals’ best interests in mind.

We fire at the dark gray combatants in smoky armor who rush the defense perimeter. Many fall to our guns. Many do not.

“Stars, they fuck like animals,” Blaize growls.

It’s how they try to win. Numbers.

For a moment, I think of our own. Amphirans are dying off, not because we are sick, but because we are becoming infertile. And I think it’s because we’re fighting our Storms.

My Storm wants me at Abr, claws at my insides, begging for release, certain I will find it there. But I have shit to handle first.

Blaize nearly empties his case of rockets, taking down fighters as I focus on ground forces. But it is the replacement troop transport, filled with fresh soldiers, that truly concerns me.

My gun rattles and kicks rapidly as it slams out bullets that scald the air, mowing down the masses. I don’t like it. It feels archaic. “Can’t reason with them. Wish we could.”

Blaize and I are forced to duck behind a small hill as bullets whiz over our heads. Some punch into the ground, spraying up dirt. Blaize closes his eyes.

“Hey.” I swat him in the crotch. “Are you really fucking sleeping right now?”

“I’m tired. You know I can sleep in a ditch.”

“I can too, but it’s not just our asses on the line this time!”

Blaize rolls his eyes. “Just wanted five fucking seconds!”

When the line of fire moves away, we peek up again.

The berserker passes us, turning its guns on Vinym shields. The dome over the facility holds, but a few smaller ones don’t. One second, they’re red and solid. The next, they’re green and wet and caved into the dirt.

My stomach turns, and something in my core snaps.

Planet Vinym begins to fall to the Nebs. The boundary breaks like my heart. Innocent soldiers, many in their teens, don’t survive.

I can keep my control most of the time.

This needs to end. I accept the deaths of those of us who have taken lives because we are not pure any longer. But I lose my temper when I see the shields burst and innocents pay the price.

“Blaize—” I rumble with fury.

He shakes his head. “You know the rules!”

I switch out the ammo belt as it runs dry and keep firing at the ground troops that advance toward the broken Vinym boundary. “We’re not going to win if I sit like a turd on hot pavement, just baking in this fucking sun!”

Vybron calls over the radio. “I know what you’re thinking, Aura. I saw it, too.”

My mentor knows me too well.

“But you can’t do anything about it,” Vybron adds.

“Can’t or shouldn’t?” I challenge. “Do you want me to let our allies die?”

His darker purple face glares at me from around the berm he and Fieri are behind. “The kings have…”

“Fuck the kings’ orders! The Nebs don’t care about them!” I roar. “We have to act if they are going to lose what they have worked so hard for!”

“I trained you to have better control!” Vybron asserts.

There’s no sense talking anymore. You did train me. And now I’m going to use it.

None of my crew or the others from our fleet know how much I’m burning up inside. Something is wrong with my Storm. It isn’t normal. If I don’t let it out, it starts to lash out. And by the arcs of green light crawling over my skin, I need a discharge, or I’m going to go full nova on someone.

“You with me?” I ask Blaize.

“Through enemy lines and nests of Firespines, brother.”

When my gun runs out of ammo, I reload it and charge out across the plains toward the oncoming enemy. There’s a ship I want to take down. Blaize stays with me.

A Nebulous soldier runs at me, then explodes in a round of friendly fire from the berserker.

Blaize laughs maniacally. “Doing our fucking jobs for us, that’s how little they give a shit about their own!”

All I can think about are the impressionable teens in the dome behind us.

I don’t want any one of their kind to die or turn out like us, comfortable sleeping in ditches with enemy fire chewing up our beds, roaming from battle to battle while surviving on a dark sense of humor that would make most people cringe.

Blaize lifts his rifle from across his chest and keeps pace with me. Fieri catches up while the other Amphirans stay behind. Even when I break the rules, Fieri and Blaize never let me wander off without tagging along.

“You crazy son of a bitch!” Fieri calls after me. He’s deep purple like Vybron with frown lines on his face from a decade more of battle than I’ve seen. “Your father’s going to have your head!”

I don’t want my father to think I’m a rebel. I want him to be sure of it.

Our people, too. I want to break the Royal reputation and bring back to life the strength of my people, the one that comes from our Storms. We are basically just big purple humans without them.

“I will not have my capabilities stifled by that pompous ass!” I retort as I run toward the nearest ship.

The berserker is within range. Time is of the essence as I slide to a stop underneath it. I toss Fieri my gun. He and Blaize split off and clear the soldiers that approach.

I crouch to the ground, eye a handhold on the belly of the berserker that’s just within my range, and launch myself skyward. My momentum slows as I reach the ship, but I grab on and crawl fast to the top. The moment I fry the bitch, she’s going to fall like a hot metal meteor.

Finding the nearest power cell, I grab it with both hands and close my eyes. Wind rips around me. Gunfire and shouts fill the air below. Guns turn on me from the berserker itself.

I think of how much I despise my father for controlling and stifling our people, how he refuses Storms as if we could wish them away.

But they are as much a part of us as our souls, hearts, bodies, and minds.

And he does not deserve to be king of our mothership.

No monster like him or any of the other kings with his agenda should be.

Electricity crackles over my body, down my arms, and into the power cell. It rips over the hull and into the grid, bursting cells and shields and shutting down engines and guns.

The berserker falls fast. The cell beneath me smokes and crackles.

As the ship smashes into the planet’s surface, Fieri and Blaize appear. They land on the hull not far from me.

When the dust settles, Blaize laughs and shakes his head. “Flattened them, Aura.”

“The others are tucking tail.” Fieri nods toward the sky. “Want us to clear the berserker?”

Vybron and the others from Amphir join us. “We will assist.”