Page 168 of Stars in Umbra
When he gazed up again, his eyes were rimmed in red, his utterance a rattle of death. ‘Because he doesn’t care about revenge anymore. He wants annihilation, especially since the Riders just destroyed all Stygian Corps operations and locations. Also, his father died disgraced. His legacy was ripped from him and mocked. So now, he craves to write his own.’
His last breath rattled from his thorax.
Lucian Makori went still, eyes open, lips parted in final confession.
Mo lowered him to the ground with slow, grim reverence.
The air trembled, not from the failing energy grid of the structure around him or the blaring alarms that blasted his eardrums, but from him.
From the rage building inside his divine core. From the singular, devastating fact that a madman had kidnapped Rina, and Eden II now faced obliteration.
Mo stood, his armor humming with power.
Caidan Thrall had crossed a line he’d never return from, and Mo would burn through the entire firmament to end him.
28
Ruthless Gods
MOLAN
High above Eden II, amid bruised skies and thunder-thick clouds, a shape tore through the upper stratosphere, a harbinger of death.
Sleek, dark, needle-nosed, its body glimmered with anti-radar plating and infernal red fins that bristled with autonomous missile turrets.
It bore no insignia, no flag, just a stylized insignia across its flank: twin blades coiled in a serpent’s mouth.
The mark of Caidan Thrall, AKA Apex Wraith.
Inside, trapped in the bridge behind a sealed inner hull door, Rina sat still within the reinforced restraints locking her into a chair.
The atmosphere around her thrummed with the high-frequency hum of pre-armed warheads, all wired to detonate on impact.
Her HUD comms were dead, and she knew he must have a blocking shield on the ship; her neural link to Mirage and Mo was a gaping void.
Still, she refused to panic; her pulse remained steady, unwilling to let the circumstances break her.
Moments later, her captor appeared, striding into the cockpit.
‘Sidoni, or shall we call you Rina Mendi, Colonel of the Dunian Army and United Pegasi Military peace corps. We meet again, but infokkin’ dire circumstances given you’re about to sacrifice your life.’
She lifted her head, eyes narrowed on him. ‘Not if Molan has anything to do with it. He’ll be your reckoning.’
He laughed, a cold, cruel sound that held no mirth.
He closed the distance between them with a swift, inhuman motion, and his hand connected with her cheek.
The slap was a jarring crack that rattled her teeth. He leaned close, his essence chilling, causing her skin to crawl.
‘Such arrogance, the same you showed sashaying into my estate and damaging my home on your righteous crusade. You and your Rider friends wrecked all I worked for over the years, so I now return the favor. I will annihilate Eden II, wipe it off Pegasi’s map. You’re the cherry on the top. The general who stymied our chances in Dunia and continued to aid the Riders inhunting Klatsch members. Until they, like my father, were dead or imprisoned. You are a destroyer, and now you too shall be destroyed.’
He sneered and stalked out.
As he disappeared from view, a sudden jolt pulsed through her gut.
A kick from her baby.
At the same time, sun rays streamed from the skies beyond the viewscreen.
