The Alien's Equal (Drixonian Warrior #7) - Ella Maven Page 0,47

for the headlights of the hover cars.

The lights going out was a sign for Gram and his small army to being their insurgency. Armed with torchlights and weapons, they’d aim to take out the weakest Uldani soldiers. From the sounds of screams, shouts, and more laser fire, I assumed they’d emerged from their bunker to begin their attack. From what I could tell, the city was in chaos, which was what we wanted.

As I began to work on disabling the long-range laser weapons that sat atop the walls of the city, Nero groaned.

“Are you okay?” I tapped a button on the screen to start the de-charging of the weapons and rushed to his side. Prodding at his head wound, I huffed when he shoved me away.

“‘M, fine,” he muttered, his words a bit slurred.

“Well, you’re not fine.” I braced a hand behind his back as he sat up. “You’re bleeding from the head and your entire thigh looks like raw meat.”

He opened his mouth to retort back to me, but then his gaze slid over my shoulder and his eyes went wide. “You… What did you do?”

“Oh, just a little bit of this, and a little bit of that.” I squinted to get a look at the progress bar on the screen. “Long-range weapons are almost shut down. Next is the sensors, and then I’ll open the gates.” I focused back on him. “Are you okay?” I held up two fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Mate,” he whispered, ignoring my attempt to evaluate his likely concussion. His purple eyes radiated awe. “You’re amazing.”

I didn’t get a chance to respond, because just then the floor tilted to the side, and the pounding of footsteps ran down the outer railing of the pod.

Nero scrambled to his feet, shuffling his bad leg behind him as he readied his gun. All business now, he jerked his chin over his shoulder at me. “Keep going. I’ll hold them off.”

I had to admit, the shouts from outside and the pounding on the door sent my heart into overdrive. I raced back to the control panel, working much more frantically now, but still focused. I couldn’t control what was going on outside, but I could control my fingers flying across this screen.

I spoke to myself in hushed tones so I could do my best to ignore the distracting sounds of battle outside. One by one, I disabled the motion sensors, the heat sensors, and all the automatic weapons which kept Alazar the fortress it was. I risked a glance at Nero to find him alternating between shooting out of the small hold he’d made in the porthole window and holding the door which he’d barricaded with the remnants of a chair he’d smashed. His blood coated the floor, and he slipped in it often as he pushed his back against the door, which jerked as fists pounded it from outside.

“How much longer?” He shouted.

I pulled up an outline of the city, where all the gates were marked in red. One-be-one, I tapped on them, turning them green. As I hit the last one, a canister flew through the open window.

A deafening boom shoved my chair off its wheels, and I crashed to the floor. Pain shot up my arm as I landed on my left side. When I tried to push myself up with my hand, my left arm wouldn’t work, hanging limp from the shoulder. “Fuck,” I gritted my teeth as I scrambled to my feet. Blood trickled into my eyes and I coughed as I staggered.

Smoke clouded the room, and I could barely see inches in front of my face. “Nero!” I waved my hand to clear the smoke to find him standing in the center of the room battling two Kulks in hand-to-hand combat. His black machets flashed in the dim light of the smoke-filled room. More bodies were visible through the haze, and I detected the silver skin of at least one Uldani.

“The comm!” Nero shouted to me. “Comm Daz!”

Shit, we still had to send Daz the signal to let him know he could attack. I dropped to a crouch and searched frantically for Nero’s pack. In the pod’s wild tilting, it slid over to the far wall behind the security control panel. I dove for it. Unfortunately, so did an Uldani.

We both hit the ground at the same time. I reached for the bag with my one good arm just as his claws raked the side of my face. I