“What?” Shocked, I double checked my father’s data. “Fark. Zara.”
“Why would they--?” Erick made a choking sound as he answered his own question. “The High Councilors’ meeting.”
“They’re taking out Bertok. He didn’t hold up his end of their bargain. Fire, Erick! Do it now. Take them out!” I shoved my father’s shocked hand out of the way and fired everything I had at the Cerberus ship’s engines from the back, their flank.
Confident Erick would keep up the tirade, I shifted my target to the glowing Spectra IV ion cannon on top of the Cerberus ship. “Fark you, Ulza. That cannon has to be mounted internally.” I knew because I had helped the engineer working with the Silver Scions to design it. The cannon was insanely powerful but had one major weakness near the center top panel. The cannon couldn’t withstand a direct shot, which was why I had redesigned my ship to create a housing for it that would protect the body of the cannon from Hive attack.
I had no problem with Cerberus finishing Bertok. There was a decent line of people waiting for a turn. But my mate was at the meeting. My mother. Use my farking cannon to kill my mate!
Everything around me faded to blank space. Nothing existed but the Cerberus ship and that cannon.
I fired my weapons, adjusted, fired again.
“Direct hit!” Erick yelled the news, but I already knew. I’d known from the moment I fired the shot and waited, watched it explode into the ion cannon as if my entire existence was happening in ultra-slow motion. Zara was down there. If I missed the shot, Zara would die.
You can’t outrun pain…
Her truth hit me hard, like a punch to my gut. I couldn’t breathe. If I lost her, there would be nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. There weren’t enough Hive in the universe to erase the agony losing her would be. I could travel the galaxy like I had been the past four years, but I’d never find what made me happy.
I’d rather be dead.
The Cerberus ship exploded into tiny pieces, and I watched with satisfaction as they fell toward Trion, burning up in the planet's atmosphere like a meteor storm.
I was an idiot.
“Outpost Nine, Erick. Now.”
“Right behind you.”
I didn’t look at my father, but I could feel his assessment, his eyes burning into me in the way only a stern parent’s could.
I no longer cared. Zara. I had to get to Zara.
The ion cannon was gone, but Bertok? That asshole was down there, on the surface, with my mate.
My father leaned forward to activate the comms.
“What are you doing?”
He grinned, the happy look in his eyes one I hadn’t seen in years. “I am notifying the council that there is a traitor in their midst, and that my brilliant, fearless son just saved them all.”
Brilliant? Fearless?
“Your female was right, Isaak. The years away have made you smarter. Stronger. Your brother was kind and funny, but he was soft. Weak. I loved him, but our people will fare very well under your protection.”
Once, I would have sold my soul to hear such praise from my father’s lips. Now? I needed to reach Zara. I cared about nothing else.
“Thank you, father.” Simple words, but I had nothing else to say.
15
Zara
“They will not let us within,” Eela said.
We walked down a grand hallway in some fancy building. Just outside were a group of tents, and outside those tents stood dozens of armed guards.
Inside the building, which would put any stone castle on Earth to shame, there wasn’t anyone around, and I had to assume everyone was in the meeting. I didn’t know where we were because I’d only been in the transport station and then in Isaak’s house for the duration of my time on Trion. We were obviously in a town, a desert town where Isaak’s dad was the head guy. They called them Councilors. Bertok was one for his area. Perhaps like governors or presidents of different parts of the planet.