Page 130 of Command

Threxin

Orion Halen was right. Alina Argoud had to live.

“You won’t be able to reroute power to the nuclear cannon without siphoning it completely from the jump drive,” Jump Drive Engineer Stharn was saying into his earpiece.

Threxin nodded, glancing to Orion Halen, then to Alina. He didn’t need to beat them—he just needed to hold them off.

“All power to shields,” he redirected. “You have to jump now.” He muttered the coordinates Orion Halen had yelled from the pit into his comms device.

“We’re… Our route is calculated for three ship days from now, from another location. We may hit?—”

“If you have any better ideas that result in us not being blown to bits by the nuclear cannon that I see powering up in that shoqing warship, I’m all fucking ears.”

He’d said that too loudly. He realized that when all eyes rolled to him, color draining from Alina’s face down in the pit.

Threxin tried to calculate whether he had time to have her Upload.

No.She subvocalized, and when she opened herself what he felt roiling off her wasn’t fear, or regret, or hatred for what he’d gotten her into.

It was a yearning. A desire to crawl inside his mind and stay there until the end.

A desire for him toknow.

He looked down at her in the pit, searching her faraway gaze. “I know.”

She went to him, stumbling as another volley of hits shook the ship. He pulled her into his lap, strapping his harness around them both with her straddled at his hips.

“Jump drive hot,”Stharn’s voice announced in the earpiece.

He put his hand on the back of Alina Argoud’s head, tucking her face into his neck so that she wouldn’t see. Behind her shoulder, on the thermaview,Colossalwas live predicting the blast radius of the incoming bomb. The craft surrounding them, still pelleting them with missiles that sentColossalinto a perpetual tremble, began to move backward out of the way.

The thermaview began to flicker, and for the first time the ship’s hull exposed the space outside. Glinting specks of light, flickers of the assaulting ships, were clearly visible in its depths. And right ahead was an enormous white-blue fire—a perfect circle growing in the distance.

Still locking,Stharn communicated.

Jump.

We risk colliding with…

Do it now.

The circle of death before them grew blinding, and in some ways looking into that white-blue fire was like looking in the mirror. For just a fraction of a tick, Threxin saw the jump control panel reveal itself in the arm of his seat before everything went white.

Threxin slammed his fist down blindly and forgot about the jump, the ship, and the screaming. They were entirely unimportant, because the rest of his time would be dedicated to the human female pressed against him. He would dedicate it to delicate fingers clutching at him so hard that they pierced themselves on the spikes at his neck. The shuddering breaths washing over his neck and jaw, the weight of her pressed to him. His nerves were alight and open as they melded, and what a pity it was that no other human or uhyre on this ship would experience this particular Heaven right before their death.

HisColossalshrieked with a sound he’d never heard before as the white death engulfed them all.

Alina

Her ears buzzed incessantly, everything around her vibrating in a silent scream. Her fingers were needles. No… there were needlesinher fingers.

Fire shot through her shoulder as she was jerked sideways, clenching even harder to whatever it was she was holding and gasping with the shock of pain that followed up her wrists.

Light registered behind her eyelids, vaguely. She opened her eyes to something black in front of her, dim flashes of red creeping into the edges.

Threxin.

She was still strapped in atop him, only now they were sideways, his hip crushing her thigh beneath it.

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