Page 2 of Akur

She was gone.

“Kon-stahns!”

As more of the reptilian Hedgeruds converged, he spotted brown strands. Saw as the Hedgeruds dragged the human away with two others of her kind. Her blue-white eyes met his one final time, not with the terror he expected, but with something far more devastating.

Resignation.

It was a look that had him momentarily frozen. Enough for a Hedgerud to find an opening, a boot coming straight to his face as they kicked him backward.

That look in the human’s eyes was the last thing he saw before he was tumbling backward into thin air.

Frozen, he was wide-eyed as he fell. Wide-eyed and momentarily frozen. Because that look…

Kon-stahns had looked at him as if she expected him to fail.

As if she knew he would.

There was no gravity beam this time. Just plain old gravity and a distinctly clear view of the massive ship as he fell from it. Impact with the ground below felt like it destroyed every cell inside him. Breath left his lungs. His bones felt shattered. And yet he could only focus on that ship, watching as the vessel began moving.

Hands—metal, familiar—hauled him from the ground. Through the ringing in his ears, he heard V’Alen’s voice over the cacophony of destruction. The base was falling apart around them. Blaster rounds tore through buildings, their heat so intense it melted the reinforced walls into slag. The air itself seemed to burn with each explosion, thick with the stench of scorched metal and burning flesh.

Through his blurred vision, he saw rebels running, falling,dying. Some were crushed beneath collapsing structures; others cut down by Hedgerud forces that kept materializing from the smoke. More Tasqal ships passed overhead, carving through what remained of their defenses. More screams. More death.

So…after all these moons…this was how it ended?

Qrak that.

He tried to rise. All that happened was his limbs refused to cooperate.

As if far away and not right beside him, he heard V’Alen talking to the human he’d managed to keep grounded, her voice trembling as she worried about the one he’d lost. Kon-stahns. Meanwhile, somewhere in the chaos, medical teams were risking Hedgerud attacks by dragging the wounded to safety, their tunics stained with the multi-colored blood of different species. The Restitution had been more than just a rebellion—it had been home to warriors from across the stars.

Now they were all falling together.

“Go,” he ground out. V’Alen needed to go. Needed to take the human he was protecting before she was lost like the one he’d been trying to hold on to. Needed to get to that orb hidden somewhere on the base. The one these jekins had come for. V’Alen had to make sure this scum didn’t reach that orb first. And as for the humans that were just taken…

He would just have to deal with that himself.

Through the smoke, he glimpsed another building collapse, burying both rebels and Hedgeruds beneath its weight.

Move. They needed to move.

One moment, he was hauling himself away from where he’d fallen from that ship, the ground beneath his feet trembling with each new blast. The next, he was in the lift that led down to the bunkers, leaving behind a world on fire. The last thing he saw before the doors closed was a squad of rebels making their last stand, their weapons blazing against an enemy that kept coming, wave after merciless wave.

Reality swam and faded. Everything blurred into a haze of pain and motion. The lift carried him down into the safety of the bunker. V’Alen was there one moment, and the next, he was gone—likely to secure the weapon. Or perhaps it hadn’t been a single moment at all. Now there were other voices—broken, haunted things. The few survivors. A handful of humans with wide, haunted stares. Rebels with missing limbs and burned flesh. He heard the medic’s clipped tones. Felt the burning rush of infusions as they tried to knit his battered body back together.

But he couldn’t escape it—that stench from above still clung to his skin. The scent of smoking ruins and broken bodies. The smell ofdefeat. Of everything they’d built reduced to ash. The remnants of everything they’d fought for, years of sacrifice gone in moments.

And that darned ship.

He needed to go after it.

It wasn’t over yet.

He couldn’t let it end like this.

Staggering off the medical table despite the medic’s protests, he headed for the dock. His boots left smears of lifeblood on the floor. His? Someone else’s? He didn’t know.

He needed a ship. Any ship. The Tasqals wouldn’t get away with this. They wouldn’t get to write this rebellion out of history like all the others.

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