Page 128 of Defiant

“She got in a starfighter?” I asked.

Yes. Fortunately, the inhibitors closest to this region are still in effect. I’ve explained the problem to them, so the slugs are blocking her and refusing to go with the delvers. They won’t abandon the taynix on Evensong. But Miss Nightshade, she is getting close!

Yes. But she’d climbed into a starfighter. And I knew where the station’s hangar bay was.

Doomslug under my arm, I leaped out into the hallway.

And very nearly got shot.

I was saved by a stumble, the destructor fire blasting over my head. With a shout, I dove back into the room, then apologized to Doomslug, who fluted at me in annoyance. I put her down.

Well, we’d just—

Whatwasthat?

“Chet?” I asked. “Something just changed.”

Delver,he sent.One who didn’t…want to join us. It has come in your direction. I am pleading with it not to destroy you.

His voice grew even more distant. And my ability to hyperjump was smothered.

I sighed, then seized a gun from the rubble. I peeked again into the hallway, but weapons fire from a half dozen soldiers set up behind a makeshift barricade drove me back. Brade had found much better troops than the ones who had been assigned to guard my prison. They knew how to keep me pinned, and each time I tried something I was forced right back into the room.

Scud. I didn’t have time for this. If Brade reached Evensong—

“Greetings,” a deep voice shouted in the hallway outside. “By tradition, the Masked Exile is supposed to announce himself before joining a battle. Consider this your warning!”

Was that…?

I poked my head out to see a tiny figure on a hover platform at the end of the hallway, behind the enemy barricade. Hesho?

Hesho was here?

Scud, he looked so small next to the enormous tenasi troops. They’d crush him. One turned a large assault rifle on him. As Hesho zipped forward on his small platform, a flash of light followed—sweeping in an arc in front of him.

The tenasi’s head thumped to the floor outside the barricade. Hesho made a motion as if returning a tiny sword to its sheath at his side—but swords didn’t make light like that, and little onescertainlydidn’t sweep through the air in a two-meter-long crescent like that one had.

Right, then. The flying fox samurai with a laser sword needed fire support. I burst into the hallway, gun at my unwounded shoulder, sighting and advancing in a steady walk. I fired on the troops, blasting body parts as they were exposed. Hesho made another sweep of light, then another.

What had been a fortified position became a killing field for confused troops trapped between two enemy forces. They tried to shoot him, but blasts went wild as he zipped about—a tiny target, difficult to hit.

Hesho finished off the last of the six as I stepped up, dumbfounded.

“Are you well?” he asked, hovering on his platform and panting softly. “You seem to have been injured at least once.”

“Hesho!” I said. “I want to hug you!”

“Because of the differences in size,” he said, raising a paw, “perhaps this human gesture will suffice.” He lifted his mask, smiling.And let me bump his paw.

“That weapon…” I said.

“Ah yes,” he said, patting the sheath at his side. “The Darting Hawk That Separates Sinew from Bone. A family weapon I fetched from Evershore when the assault was announced. You charge it like this…” He grabbed the sheath. “Then you whip it out like this…” It released a burst of energy when he swung, making the air glow. By the time he returned it to the sheath, it had stopped glowing. “Not the most efficient weapon, but it has a certain historical flair which I thought appropriate for my current station.”

“Thank you,” I said to him. “Whatever debt you owed me for helping you in the nowhere is paid.”

“Ah, but that is not how it works, Spensa,” he said. “You mistake me. I did not come here because of a debt.” He smiled. “I came to help a friend.”

I grinned back, then grabbed Doomslug and waved for Hesho to join me as I ran into the hangar bay. We just had to steal a ship and…

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