Page 180 of Scorching the Alien Empire
This should be an easy kill. But something is wrong. The shields—they don’t break. They were flickering, dying. Now, they flare to life, stronger than before, flaring white-hot as they absorb every molten blast.
What is this?
The Voidbane drifts further away. No—not drifting. Pulling us in. The space beyond is littered with twisted, melted metal. A graveyard of ruinous hulks, and drones languishing like lost spirits.
Not wrecks, but deactivated ships. My blood turns to ice water. A trap.
The noose is tightening around my unwary neck.
Fool!
Chapter 34
Dracoth
The Future
“Breakoffattack!”Iroar, fingers slamming over the ship’s controls in a desperate effort to reverse course.
TheRavager’s Ruinshudders violently as I wrench the ship around, the sheer force of the reversal groaning through megatons of arcweave. The viewport lurches, twisting in a blur of motion, but it may be too late.
The trap has been sprung.
Four Voidbanes awaken from their slumber, hulking masses of blackened metal rising from the wreckage like hemovyrns stirring from their catacombs to devour our flesh. Their thrusters burst to golden life, shields flaring into existence, streaking toward us like predators locked onto prey.
Not just them.
Tens of thousands of Seeker drones spill from behind the drifting debris, their forms emerging in synchronized waves. Silent. Calculated. A perfect ambush.
Clever. Brutal. Nearly fatal.
“Well, smack my ass and call me a Snarlbroc,” Drexios hoots, his hands flinching from the weapon controls. “We’re hard and ready to unload, and these sneaky bastards are playing dead like a ten-credit whore with a laser cannon up—”
“Eww. You are so fucking gross, Drex-iot,” Princesa cuts him off with a groan, cupping Todd’s head segment between her hands. “Don’t let the disgusting man’s foul language corrupt your pure heart.”
The comms burst with another wave of static, but beneath the garbled noise, so faint I might have imagined it—my name.
“Dracoth...”
Icy tendrils crawl over my skin taking root in my mind, seeding doubt in my thoughts. This overwhelming force, this all-knowing intellect... can it even be defeated?
I grit my teeth and crush the hesitation before it can take hold, drowning it beneath the ceaseless fury burning in my chest. I vowed to avenge Ignixis and all the lost females. For every twisted horror the Voidbringer has wrought, I will answer with fire and blood. If there is a way, I will find it. I will tear through every circuit, shatter every polymer frame, pulverize every last fragment of code that the Voidbringer clings to.
The chaos around me fades into the background, my Rush-fueled senses blazing like rivers of fire beneath the Peaks of Scarn. I push the ship to maximum non-hyperspeed, twisting and weaving through the storm of incoming fire. Plasma blasts streak past the viewport in blinding arcs of azure, momentarily illuminating the black marble interior like a hundred miniature suns.
Others crash into our shields, the impact sending shockwaves through the hull, shrill generator wailing in protest. The black marble beneath my fingers vibrates from the force, a relentless percussion of destruction.
Four Voidbanes and a horde of Seeker drones cling to us like a pack of hydraliths sinking their fangs into struggling prey’s flesh, savoring the meal to come. Had I hesitated—had I been a second slower in recognizing the trap—we’d already be wreckage, swallowed whole by their metal jaws. Instead, they pursue us at the extreme edge of their weapon range, snapping at our heels, waiting for a mistake.
“Little ol’ me, spoilt for choice,” Drexios muses, fingers flying over the weapon controls.
The ship shudders as our cannons respond in kind, unleashing a storm of molten plasma. The rhythmic thud-thud-thud of artillery fire vibrates through the hull, a satisfying counterpoint to the chaos outside.
“Shields at seventy-four percent, War Chieftain,” Corsark calls out, gripping the terminal for support as another barrage slams into us.
Will we reach the defenders in time?
Another burst of static crackles over the comms.
