experience with Ellie how difficult this will be for a human female. They are strong in certain ways, but weak in so many others. Annabelle has been very strong and resilient given the situation, but this is not going to come as easy news for her.
“I’ll wait outside,” Kula says, “and guard the door.”
I wait until he’s in the hallway, and then I gently wake her.
“Muru, wake up.”
She smiles up at me as a beam of sunlight illuminates her face. Her smile is gone once her eyes focus, and she sees the hard look on my face.
“What is it, Raiska?”
“They’ve found us. We have to move you to a safer location.”
“What then?”
“Then Kula and I will kill them.”
“If I’m going to be pregnant soon...couldn’t we just hide? You don’t need to fight.”
I shake my head. “You are not pregnant. Something is wrong with me. The bond did not take. Still, you are my Muru. I will defend you as if you were a physical part of me.”
We waste no time getting Annabelle into a car. We order the car’s AI to take us to the nearest city.
Thrace is surrounded on the western edge by a massive mountain range. It’s not especially tall, but it’s very wide, and there are few roads that run through it. On the other edge of the mountains, there is a rainshadow effect, and a sparse and barren wasteland for many hundreds of miles. Eventually there is a large stretch of plains, and on a lake within those plains is another major city. This will be our target.
I will not be naive enough again to expect that we will be safe there forever, but the other competitors came too close to Kula, and we don’t have time to set up a defense within Thrace.
The car takes off and moves skyward. I can see the great sea behind us—the sea that Annabelle and I watched the stars over as we first landed on Lakria—and the mountains stretch from horizon to horizon in front of us.
I take her hand as the car climbs in altitude. “It will be okay. I’ll keep you safe.”
Kula is across from us in the other seat. The car is set up so that all the passengers are facing each other. He’s not there to watch us though, he’s watching our flank while I keep an eye on everything in front of us.
Annabelle squeezes my hand and forces a brave smile.
Just as I’m about to offer her further reassurance, I see Kula’s eyes widen, and he reaches reflexively for his six-dimensional axe.
“What is it?” I ask.
He nods his head, and I look backward.
In the distance behind us, I see the sun catch on something in the air. It’s almost at the same altitude as us.
I close my eyes and sense across the higher dimensions. The signature is faint, but I know it’s them.
“They are following us,” I whisper.
“Is our car faster?” Annabelle asks.
I squint and watch. It takes many seconds before I can be sure, but soon I am. They are moving faster than we are.
Kula is shouting at the AI and asking it to move faster, but it claims that this is the top “safe” cruising speed.
“Override!” I shout. “We won’t be safe if that other car catches up to us.”
“Sorry,” it says, “in these atmospheric conditions, I cannot apply any additional thrust.”
Kula gives me a nervous look, but he pulls a gun out of a holster strapped onto his upper thigh.
“What’s the range on that?” I ask.
“Probably not long enough.”
“It’s better than nothing.”
He hands the weapon to me, and I try to sight toward the car behind us.
“It’s a laser,” Kula says, “you can fire it right through the glass.”
The car that they are in is reflecting a lot of sunlight, which means it will likely reflect a lot of the laser too. I’d need to hit one of them right in the head to do real damage. At this range, I’d be lucky to even hit the car itself, let alone a small target like a head.
Just as I’m getting ready to take a shot, a purple burst of light erupts from the car behind us. It’s not a laser, because it doesn’t move at the speed of light. Our car jerks down, and my stomach lurches. The purple blast misses the top of our car by about six inches.
The AI speaks in an eerily calm voice. “We are under attack. I am now authorizing your request for additional thrust. Even