Page 106 of Alien Soldier

I snap my gaze back toward him to find his knife in his hand, his eyes trained on the dying general. Vines crawl over Malix’s ankles, but I don’t think he even realizes what’s happening.

And I don’t have time to stop him—to figure out what the hell is going to happen next—before he slits Qiloka’s throat.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

??

MALIX

Almost instantly, I’m swallowed by darkness.

Frankie calls my name, but it echoes and fractures, my senses expanding until I fill the whole planet. I contract again to a pinpoint, then my vision unfolds like a lotus. A beam flies into deep space, and I see Ravik’s face for a moment, then the glassy eyes of the Oracle in Jokahn’s villa.

I’m lost.

The message repeats.

Survive. Survive. Survive.

It isn’t meant to be cryptic; it’s meant to be received a different way, that’s all. And the message has decayed over time, lost when efforts to retrieve this technology failed.

Thus, only a fragment remains:The biological imperative is survival. Cross-breeding to obtain the best possible result. Where we have failed, our children will succeed.

I suddenly know without words, the interface telling me the story. The signal from Azoth wasn’t a warning shot; it was a call for help, beacons stretching across dark space to call for aid.

And the thing they used to destroy Rath isn’t a weapon.

It was neverintendedto be a weapon.

It’s a terraforming engine.

But there’s nothing stopping me from using it as a weapon on the Skoropi that remain.

I move as the temple, vines reaching out to devour the last of the Second House soldiers inside. I see our troops staring in shock, familiar faces from Logos. Someone screams and covers their mouth—a human marine.

I hear bones crack as I end each and every one of our enemies here in the ancestral temple.

My body curls abruptly, pain erupting across every inch of my flesh. I’m being stabbed with needles, constricted. I remember a phrase:psychic shock. My brain burns.

“I’ve got you,” a male voice says. “I’ve got you, Malix.”

“Why the hell did you do that?” a female voice says.

They hold my hands, one on either side. Their minds grow closer. I expand to pull them in, and I hear Frankie hiss out a breath.

“What the—”

“We can use our minds to share the burden,” Taraven says. “It shouldn’t pull us in completely.”

The pressure eases. I relax into the sensation of constriction, letting myself be embraced by the cortex. It holds me close, vines crawling over my arms, fibers creeping into my veins.

I find the satellites racing toward Lyran space.

Qiloka was angry; the weapons are numerous. Enough to destroy not just Halla, but each of our moons and possibly our homeworld. I don’t let myself give into his anger, instead focusing on calling the satellites home. Home to Liatra, to be buried again until needed.

I move with them through space, watch them return. They move impossibly fast—through wormholes, across transdimensional space. I settle into the cortex, losing track of my physical form. I’m a shooting star, lost.

A warm hand is around mine, a tail around my ankle.

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