“Fine?” She couldn’t spare the breath to ask a complete question.
He nodded hurriedly, but the growing stain of blood on his jacket made her stand. She had to get him to the ship. A snap and a hiss echoed in her ears and she fell forward. Her arms tingled with the sensation of her shield fizzling out. Fear churned in her gut and bubbled up her throat.
“How long do these things take to recharge?” she blurted, voice shaking.
The barrels vibrated with gun shots.
“Dunno,” Fehn grunted. He pinched his eyes shut and before she could stop him, he tugged the arrow out of his shoulder. He groaned and tossed the thing aside.
“Councilwoman!” a guard shouted.
All of Tayel’s muscles went impossibly stiff. Her heart stopped. Her palms sweat. She inched her face around the edge of a barrel. The Delta councilwoman stepped out of the trees, her eyes trained on the barricade.
“Who?” Fehn asked.
“Rokkir,” Tayel breathed.
“So,” the Argel cooed. “You’ve all learned our little secret.”
“Councilwoman, please retreat yourself to safety!” a man yelled. “There are more of us on the way and it’s dangerous to—”
“Vile human!”
Her talon erupted with dark aether she fired at the guard. It punched into him, and he soared, lost in the trees around the clearing. The other men stopped their firing, some stunned, some terrified. The Rokkir downed them all in seconds. One by one, she rid the clearing of guards until it was just her, standing alone, Argelian features calm.
“She’s — she’s sick,” Fehn groaned. “Why would—? Red, we need to…” He trailed off, eyes on Shy’s ship. It sat motionless, engines off, not at all ready to fly.
A wave of dark aether broke through the barricade, picking Tayel up and heaving her through the air. She crashed into the ground, skidding along the grass for yards until stopping. Cold mud caked her arms and pants, and her body ached. Her muscles twitched groggily at her directive to move, but her mind raced.
The Rokkir laughed. Tayel craned her throbbing neck. A wall of aether cascaded forward. Her body seized with terror, and the darkness crunched into her, picking her off the ground and tossing her to the edge of the trees. She landed with a thud, and the mag baton slipped from her grip.
She opened her mouth, struggled to breathe, but the air wouldn’t come. She rolled onto her hands and knees, and a little breath sucked in. Her vision blurred. Her hand moved to her throat, a pointless attempt to open her airway from the outside. The grass spun, a twirl of pale green strings.
A sharp, squawking cry cut through the haze. “Tayel!”
Jace screamed from the ship. Its engines revved, a booming roar over his cries.
Tayel grit her teeth. She tried to move her arms, but they had become jelly. Something hard kicked her over, face toward the sky. The Rokkir planted her foot on Tayel’s gut, pressing. The cartilage around the woman’s beak lifted into a smile.
“Oh, you’re Tayel.” She whistled a short, eerie tune. “Ruxbane wants you alive?” She cocked her head like she was contemplating the idea. Her eye ridges narrowed, her smile widened, and she gathered the aether to her.
No. Tayel clawed at the grass. She thought of her mom, and Jace, and Fehn, and Shy and all the things she hadn’t done, the Rokkir she hadn’t stopped. Her eyes darted, searching for her weapon.
Fehn ran forward, haggard and dripping with blood, shotgun aimed at the woman’s face. She reacted, aiming the blast meant for Tayel at him instead. The force knocked him through the air, and wrenched the gun from his grasp.
Pressure released slightly from Tayel’s gut. She inhaled sharply, and kicked the distracted councilwoman’s frail leg, knocking her off balance. Tayel rolled sideways, creating distance. She looked up, and there, in the grass, beside Fehn coming to a stand, was her mag baton. She put one arm forward, took a breath, put another arm forward, took a breath. Her knees shimmied in the grass to propel her.
“Get back here!” the woman squawked.
Tayel hadn’t made it to her weapon, but Fehn had found his. He charged the Rokkir a second time.
“Fehn, wait!” Tayel cried. If they could just coordinate and take this threat together…
The woman snapped her talon forward. Fehn snapped his hand forward, too, grabbing her talon. He tightened his grip over the councilwoman’s fist, and a tremendous cloud of dark aether built between them, spilling into tendrils which whipped along the grass. Tayel froze, unable to look away.
The Rokkir’s face turned fearful, her eyes going wide.
Fehn screamed. He pushed forward, and the gigantic gathering of aether exploded in front of him. The impact shuddered across the ground, and Tayel rose her arm. She covered her face from the rain of dirt and rock.
The patter of debris ceased as the small quake stopped, and Tayel finally snatched her mag baton from the grass. But the Rokkir was gone. She sucked in a raspy breath. The Rokkir was gone, and Fehn lay still.
She stumbled toward him, her legs quivering, threatening to let her fall. “Fehn!”
She rolled him over. The right sleeve of his favored trench coat burned away, the lines of orange flames beginning to reveal the smooth, black prosthetic arm beneath. Dark aether evaporated from polymer fingers, and trails of purple light traced a glowing geometric pattern across the prosthesis, slowly fading.
Tayel drew a sharp breath. Even with body mods — even with a cyonic limb — she’d never seen dark aether used by anyone except a Rokkir. Fehn opened his eyes. He glanced his arm, and his expression sunk.
“Red,” he muttered, “it’s okay.”
She opened her mouth, but no words came out.
“It’s just me,” he said.
Footsteps rumbled the grass behind her, and Shy stopped at her side. “Tayel, are you—?
We have to…” Her eyes landed on Fehn. Her hand gripped Tayel’s upper arm, and pulled her backward. “You did use dark aether.”
He groaned, “It’s—”
The trees rustled around them. Shouts echoed toward the clearing.
“We need to go,” Shy said. “Get up. We’ll deal with this later.”
Fehn grunted as he stood, and Tayel jogged between him and Shy toward the ship. Her body was heavy, and her legs numb.
They boarded, closing the door behind them. The vessel hummed under Tayel’s feet. Baton clenched in her grip, she fell against the wall opposite the door and slid down it. Jace moved to her, eyes frantic with worry, but she couldn’t placate his concerns. Fehn’s cyonic arm held him upright against the wall, but his flesh one still let blood flow like a river from the shoulder.
They’d all been so close to dying.
The ship revved and hummed as it lifted. Tayel steadied herself against the ground.
“We’ll be breaking orbit in under a minute,” Shy’s voice said through the crackling speaker. “It’ll be a bumpy ride up until I activate the FTL drive. You… might want to hold onto something.”
Tayel could handle bumpy. She could not handle standing again to reach the holds dangling from the ceiling. She balanced herself against the turbulence. The sky outside the viewing pane turned a darker and darker shade of black until, in an instant, it was as if a light snapped on. Tayel’s stomach twisted as they slid into slipstream, white light crackling out the window as they tore through space toward Modnik.