the chaos and destruction around us. I can see blood pooling around her nostrils, bright red, clinging to her skin in the zero gravity. “I thought … I thought I was getting better at it.”
“You are.” I look at her intently. “You will.”
She shakes her head. “I saw …”
“What, be’shmai?”
She meets my eyes, and I sense fear in her. Fear and heartsickness, all the way to her bones. “I saw you … get hurt. Bad.”
My heart lurches, and I will it to be still. Warbreed fear no death. Warbreed fear no pain. Warbreed fear only to never taste victory. My father taught me that.
“… How?” I ask.
She shakes her head, wincing as the ship continues to break up around us, stanchions failing, bulkheads twisting apart. The totality of the destruction she has unleashed should be chilling. Her power, terrifying.
Instead, I feel only awe.
“It’s … hazy,” she says. “You got shot. You were aboard a ship. I saw … dark metal. Fuzzy dice. You … you were dressed the same as you’re dressed now.”
“Nobody is going to hurt me,” I smile. “With you at my side, I am unbreakable.”
She shakes her head and whispers, “Kal, I wasn’t by your side.”
“Kal, you read me?”
I touch my uniglass to transmit. “Affirmative, sir.”
“We’ve got Fin. Sending you coordinates for rendezvous. Security is all over us like a rash now, so we’re coming in red-hot. Zila will guide you.”
“Can you hear me, Legionnaire Gilwraeth?” comes a small, calm voice.
“Yes, Zila, loud and clear.”
“We are currently being pursued by thirteen Scythe-class fighters and two Reaper-class cruisers, so we will be unable to slow down below fifteen hundred kilometers per hour unless we wish to be incinerated by their missile fire.”
“Understood.”
“You will be attempting to match our speed and intercept the Zero, making a landing in the loading bay as we fly by.”
“At fifteen hundred kilometers per hour,” I say.
“Correct,” Zila says, just as deadpan.
“Understood.”
“Is that even possible?” Aurora asks, eyes wide.
“It is more likely Legionnaire Gilwraeth will succeed than a human would,” Zila replies. “Syldrathi reflexes are superior to Terrans’. If he matches Zero’s speed along the axis of pursuit, being X, and maintains speeds below one hundred kilometers per hour along the axis of approach, being Y, I calculate the odds of him successfully performing this maneuver at approximately six hundred and—”
“Thank you, Zila, we don’t need a breakdown of the math right now,” Tyler says. “Kal, I’ve sent you the trajectory; just burn hard and follow Zila’s mark.”
“Understood.”
“You can do this, buddy,” Tyler says.
I look down at Aurora in my arms and smile.
“I know,” I say.
“Ten seconds, Legionnaire Gilwraeth,” Zila says.
Aurora tightens her jaw and nods. She slips her arms around my waist, and my stomach turns a dozen somersaults at her touch.
“Eight seconds.”
I grit my teeth, breathe deep.
“Six.”
“Kal?” Aurora says.
“Four.”
“Yes, be’shmai?”
“Three.”
She leans up and presses her faceplate to mine, as if to kiss my cheek. There are only a few millimeters of visor between us. Warm, soft breath fogging the plasteel. The entire universe is perfectly still.
“Two.”
“You got this,” she says, meeting my eyes.
“Mark.”
I engage my thrusters, pushing them hard as we take off through the Hadfield’s wreckage. Moving slow at first, I guide us past massive bulkheads and disintegrating walls, tons of metal, building up to frightening speed. I can see the incoming Zero as a small green blip on my digital HUD, surrounded by pulsing scarlet dots, Aurora and myself rendered as a tiny speck of white.
I thread us through a roiling storm of debris, sheaves of metal as big as houses, ripped apart like tissue paper. We are moving quick now—fast enough that any collision will kill us. The black outside the Hadfield’s hull is being lit by explosions and tracer fire, and I can feel him inside me. The thing I was raised to be, straining at the thought of the battle out there, of blood being spilled.
I’na Sai’nuit.
But I push him back. Away.
“Hold on to me,” I say.
Aurora squeezes, her eyes locked on me in wonder. All is chaos about us, a twisted tempest of broken metal and wreckage as the Hadfield continues to disintegrate. I spiral between immense conduits, tumbling end over end, twenty tons of sundered hatchway scything through the black just a meter shy of my head, the Zero drawing ever closer.
“Your speed is insufficient, Legionnaire Gilwraeth.”
I see the incoming Zero, rusted and ugly but flying toward us swift and straight as an honor blade. I see the Hephaestus fighters swarming around her like fireflies