Page 49 of Shattered Silence

“We are nothing like them.” Enki declared quietly as he slipped into the navigation seat. He thought hard, trying to think of what he could say to make her feel secure. “The ones who abused you are all dead by my hand. I will not allow that to happen to you again, Layla. I will kill anyone who tries to hurt you.”

Layla rubbed her arms as she acknowledged his promise with a single nod. She swallowed and blinked fiercely, her eyes glistening as she digested his words. “I know that,” she whispered.

“Good.” He might be defective, but it was important that Layla understood what he was all about. “We will continue this conversation later.”

BOOM! A great explosion rocked the Rysor, shaking the walls and floor. Beside him, Layla gasped.

“Don’t worry about the blast, brother. It’s just me.” That was Nythian, of course.

“What took you so long?” Irritation was starting to get the better of Enki. Things weren’t exactly working out as he’d planned, but when did they ever?

He just wanted to be away from here, with Layla. He wanted peace and quiet.

He was tired.

“I think I broke the airlock when I came in,” Nythian answered wryly, before his comm went silent.

Click. Click. BOOM. A second explosion reverberated through the walls.

“Just me again. I was just kidding about the airlock. Those things are designed to be self-repairing. I’m guessing you’re in that flyer at the end of the bay, the one drawing all the negative attention.” A low whistle of appreciation escaped Nythian’s lips. “Is that Daegan’s body on the floor over there? You don’t waste time, do you, Enki?”

“He was asking for it.” In more ways than one.

“I thought I had dibs on that scalp, but never mind. I’m going to stay and play while you cruise off with the prize. I’m about to divert your attackers in a big way, so you’d better consider leaving now.”

“We are going.”

“Safe travels,” Nythian said, sounding like his his usual unserious self. “I’ll clean up the mess and wait for Ikriss to get here. Shouldn’t leave all the fun for them when we were the ones who found the Rist.”

The comm went silent, and moments later, Enki heard screaming through the thick walls of the ship. He glanced at the Rysor’s sylth. “Sylth, execute an immediate departure. You have permission to speak.”

The sylth’s blue light flared as it scanned Enki and registered his bio-sig. Before turning against the Empire, General Tarak had quietly made sure that each First Division warrior was given universal access to every ship, entrance, and base in the Kordolian military apparatus.

Their DNA was encoded into vast networks across the Nine Galaxies, and it would forever remain that way.

Such foresight. It was almost as if he’d predicted the downfall of the Empire so many revolutions ago.

And that was why Tarak al Akkadian was the boss.

“Welcome, Master,” the sylth said, her soft voice cutting through the muffled explosions from outside. “What is your destination?”

“Just get as far away from here as possible, and do it fast.” It didn’t matter where they went. They wouldn’t be on the Rysor for long, anyway.

“As you command.”

The Rysor started to ascend. Another explosion rocked them from below, causing the ship to shake from side to side as it rose into the air. In typical sylth fashion, the movement was slow and methodical, nothing like the magical physics-defying kind of flight Lodan could coax out of these machines.

But it didn’t matter. With Nythian handling things below, they drifted toward the airlock without interruption, the Rysor’s engines humming as they prepared for a massive acceleration burst.

Nearly there.

Now, all they had to do was avoid getting blasted to smithereens by the Ristval V’s powerful plasma beams.

Chapter Eighteen

At last, a break.

As they left the chaos behind, drifting toward oblivion, Layla closed her eyes and replayed everything in her mind. It ran like a bad horror movie—the micrometeorite storm, her fellow passengers dead, drifting alone, getting captured by monstrous aliens, the agony of the pain collar, the mad doctor and his terrible claws…

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