While he rummaged through the detritus strewn all around them, she peeked out from behind their little barrier. Maybe she should be grateful for having to try out all the videogames she’d prohibited Ollie from playing.
Though Dorn had clearly intended to flee theDeepWander, now he was hesitating, obviously wanting to retrieve the rock but not sure it was worth his life. She fired once, hoping to resolve the question for him. But a flurry of shots from the invaders made it clear they weren’t giving up either.
Heart skittering erratically—because thiswasn’ta video game—she ducked besides Teq. “We can’t hold them off forever. Should we give up and surrender the rock?”
“No. At this point, their only choice is to leave nothing of us behind, if they want to sell at the Luster and not on some less lucrative black market.”
How unfair to come all this way only to face such greed and violence again. She swallowed hard. “Then what?”
“Just don’t let them kill me,” he warned.
“What…?”
He popped out from behind their fragile shelter, hauling some hastily assembled device with him. A little cord dangling behind. He’d promised to show her how to blow things up, but she hadn’t wanted the lesson to go likethis.
The mechanism she had wasn’t even a real weapon, just a tool the orcs used to cut up rubble. It had just enough reach to keep Dorn and the others away from Roxy, but all they needed was one moment to grab it while she was ducking in fear.
Teq clambered up into the hollow robotic shell Dorn had abandoned. The behemoth robot looked much the worse for wear. But he managed to guide it toward the hole in the hatch. Was he going to use it to block the hole? That wouldn’t really stop the air from escaping or stop the invaders from coming in.
Under Teq’s control, the robot continued its halting stumble toward the break in the hull. Somewhere in the depths with Teq, a red light began to blink, slowly at first.
Then faster.
As if it were counting down in the language she didn’t need to know.
Lightheaded, whether from hypoxia or panic she wasn’t sure, she finally understood.
The robot was a walking bomb.
And Teq was going with it.
“No!” Even in her own head with the universal translators embedded there, she couldn’t hear herself through the thinning atmosphere and escalating chaos.
Pinning her finger on the device controls so that its fading energy shot wildly ahead of her, she ran after the robot—and Teq. Obviously deciding that his chances with the invaders weren’t great if he didn’t have Roxy, Dorn reversed course away from the holed hull, pelting back toward the main corridor.
She didn’t bother looking back.
Teq would sacrifice himself for his ship, that was clear enough. But she got that. She’d never been willing to sacrifice for herself, only for Ollie. Well, Teq might not save himself, but he would save her. She was sure of it—sure ofhim—as she’d never believed anything else in her life.
With all his focus on the hole in front of him, he never had a chance to stop her. And she was right beside him, reaching through the bent and broken structure of the robot.
She couldn’t speak, breathless from the void and panic.
His dark eyes opened wide, so wide and black like all of space, like all her fears distilled down to this moment of the bad choices and fear.
She reached toward him. Her hand had never seemed so weak and small, even when she was warding off the blows that had ended her old life.
He’d told her once he wouldn’t touch her, that he couldn’t feel. The countdown light was blinking faster, but still not as frantic as her pulse. If he wouldn’t reach back now…
The wind wasn’t quite as strong—meaning the air pressure was equalizing and not in a good way—but it was still gusting enough to make her sway. Maybe she was never going to be strong enough, forever doomed to be rocked by fickle fate and other people’s choices.
“Teq.”
It wasn’t even a whisper; she didn’t have the breath. But despite the whipping wind, his antennae focused on her.
And he thrust one hand out through the machine cage.
A hand slicked with blue-green ichor: orc blood.