Page 75 of May the Stars Have Mercy
Until something changed. His vision went fuzzy, streaks of white and black filtering down like a wave crashing over him. Suddenly, his scanner saw much more. The planet was throbbing. Walls filled with pulsating, twitching globs of Brexzkit. Reevar adjusted suddenly as some of them began to spill out.
“Now!”
His bark was muffled by the quick blast by his hunters. Beams of sharp light hissed through the air and rendered the scans useless for a long moment. The once empty void turned to an echo chamber of screams. Brexzkit fled from them, his vision clearing and Xexis was finally able to see…the wave of them crashing over Grooug and Kiefgr. Reevar said something in the comms, but he could only hear the roar of his heart as he blasted across the ground. Reevar set off the cannon again, blasting him over the top of the moon and onto the other side.
Kiefgr was floating backward, blasting the oncoming wave with the cannon, but there were too many.
Xexis pulled out his blades, igniting them with lasers around the edges and began to carve through the wave. Grooug seemed to have the same idea, carving out whole chunks of the Brexzkit. It wasn’t until he’d gotten to the other side, landing beside Kiefgr, that he saw something peculiar. Kiefgr’s whole suit, in just a second, flashed between the platelets. Then Xexis watched something crumble out of his suit like ash.
Aphrodite’s upgrades.
“They can crawl between your armor platelets!” He barked, changing Kiefgr’s aim from the tunnel he’d been clearing to another. The moon shifted, as if spun by the sheer magnitude of the cannon. Grooug raced over the planet, stabbing and slicing through the swarming sludge collecting on top.
Xexis had a single moment to see all of Grooug’s platelets light up like a bug zapper before his entire body was blasted by Reevar’s cannon. The hunter launched through the void. Xexis snapped out a line and caught him by the back, their suits syncing up.
“Kannatch, I need the momentum! Swing me!” Grooug angled his body with his thrusters, his blade replaced with his blaster, aimed straight ahead of him. Xexis prepared to feel the brunt force of Kiefgr’s cannon, nodding to Grooug. When his hunter gave the signal, his Kannatch dove into the blast, ripping through the dead of space and sending his friend in an arc toward another wave. He fired away, never taking his finger off the trigger.
Xexis smacked into the face of the planet before the blast from Kiefgr’s cannon died out. Grooug detached himself from the Kannatch’s line and dove into the peril. Reevar was not too farbehind him. Xexis spared his youngest a quick glance, finding the hunter backing up and preparing a second blast.
“Aim for the heart of the moon; any of them found hiding, I want cleared!” he ordered.
Kiefgr nodded, setting the cannon’s newest aim toward the largest crater of the moon. It had stopped moving, and all in the area went still. Reevar cut off his blast, waiting in space. Grooug gulped down air, floating near Reevar’s ankle, blaster out.
Xexis scanned the moon. The globs that had fled from the planet deteriorated, turned to floating ash in the dead end of space.
All was still. Xexis could feel his heartbeat soften. His breathing regulated.
Then, all the platelets around his feet ignited in light as he was ripped through the surface of the moon. Screams of his name were muffled through the rock as he was wrenched deep into the moon. Breaking through tunnel after tunnel till he hit a hollowed core. Other than the massive hole dug by his body, there was no other exit.
His suit lit up. Flash. Flash. Flash. Tendrils of smoke and oily goop slapped at him before screaming in pain. He couldn’t hear his pack on the comms even if he tried. He was drowning in the Brexzkit. Like a sea, he was dragged into the belly of the creature, thick and deep enough to swallow him hole. Despite his swinging blades and flashing suit, he sank until he was fully encompassed.
The Brexzkit swallowing him sizzled and hissed until he was left in a hollow bubble. Fully surrounded, but they did not try to breech his suit.
“Foolish quest. You’ll die to kill us.”
Xexis held his stance, studying his enemy.
“You’ll wish you were dead.”
“Who poisoned you? What mission did they give you?”
“Poison! Poison! They infected us, stuffed us full of their poison. Fed us cruel things till we fed…we feed, we need… And we…hunger…”
“To what end did they do this? Why?” he barked, spinning around, searching for answers.
“To kill the Council, they says. To rid the stars of life, they says…to destroy the VROZ!”
The gelatinous, mucus-like substance around him dove in on his suit. He heard the crackle, feeling the warmth of the lights going off, but it was too much. Xexis choked as his body was crunched between teeth that didn’t exist. The sickening crack of his platelets giving way as he saw bite after bite drive into his suit. He slashed and carved, but it poured out of cracks within the moon. Xexis was drowning.
His last thought was of Aphrodite. Of the horrified look on her face when his pack returned without him. Of the tears in her eyes when she yelled at him about dying without her. Of the wail she would make when he didn’t return to her. Xexis had never felt an ache in his chest quite like the one tearing his chest apart from the inside. This was heartbreak.
He’d never see his mate again. He’d never tell his pack how well they did or how honored he was to have hunted with them. He’d never be able to apologize to Xnasis for not being the Kannatch he deserved, or to Xreck for not taking him out on hunts as often ashis brother asked. Xexis wouldn’t be able to do any of those things, and it broke him.
Tears welled up in his mask as he tried to swim to the surface of the Brexzkit. Something grabbed ahold of his boots and dragged him down.Crack.
What followed was the loudest, ear-ringing, drum-busting, vision-spinning shriek he’d ever heard before his comms blocked it out. And Xexis watched as a little octopus-shaped drone dropped into the middle of the Brexzkit, filling the hollowed core of the moon with light…shortly before a blast knocked him back against the hard crust of the moon and swiftly rocketed him out the other side.
Chapter Forty-Three:
