The Skygem's door was already open. The ship moved in close, and a woman in a blue and gold voidsuit reached for Yvian. Yvian couldn't see her face through the visor, but she new those curves. Yuriko. What was she doing here?

No time. Yvian grabbed the human. Dr. Miner pulled her into the ship. Gravity took hold as Yvian crossed the threshold, crashing her into the ground. Yvian scrambled. Her damaged knee wouldn't support her, so she crawled for the control Nodes as fast as she could. Yuriko saw what she was doing and tried to help.

Crunch, that Peacekeeper suit was heavy. Yvian's heart pounded as she scrambled for the Node. It wasn't far. Just ten meters. She got there fast, all things considered. Yvian prayed to the Bright Lady it had been fast enough.

Reba's reserve force had YEET Artillery barges. They'd destroyed the first wave of Queenships. They'd no doubt already fired at the second. Yvian didn't know how far away they were, but a YEET round would travel at eighty kilometers a second. At two thousand kilometers, it would take twenty seconds to kill the new Queens. At six thousand, a minute. Her people could die any moment, if they hadn't already.

There was another woman at the control Nodes. Yvian assumed it was Dr. Laswell. The lady released her hold on a control crystal when she saw Yvian coming. She stood. Yvian got the impression she was saying something, but the pixen's comms were as fried as the rest of her armor, and there was no atmosphere to carry the sound. Not that it mattered. Yvian ignored the woman. She ignored the downed Peacekeeper unit next to the woman. She ignored Yuriko and her bad knee and her screaming tailbone and every other Crunchdamned distraction and grabbed the green crystal Node.

Yvian became the Skygem. Her senses expanded into the void. At the same time, confusion and panic exploded into her soul. The babies were crying. They'd sensed their big sister, and their pleas for help hammered at the crystal ship. The Skygem desperately wanted to save them, but she did not know how. She begged Yvian to tell her what to do.

Yvian focused on the crying Lucendian ships. Three of them were afraid. They were yoked to human vessels, but those vessels had been disabled. They were trapped, terrified, but mostly unharmed..

The fourth was in terrible pain. The newborn crystal ship was being force fed. More energy than she could process was being rammed into her hull. The baby ship was shunting the excess the only way she could, but the strain was too much. It would kill her. Tiny cracks were already spreading through her body.

Yvian followed the psychic wail. The final Techjammer was positioned about a thousand kilometers from the Gate's farthest edge. Yvian's heart sank when she saw it. A Dreadnaught. Ten kilometers of unstoppable war machine, the pinnacle of human technology. It wasn't as powerful as a Queenship, but it didn't have to be.

The Skygem possessed only one weapon. A pair of crystals that formed a beam emitter. The original purpose of the crystals was the transfer of energy between Lucendian ships, but it was almost twice as destructive as a Stinger unit's weapon. Excellent for combat with other fighter class ships. Useless against a Federation Dreadnaught.

A Pulse would take it out. The Skygem could release all her energy at once, and destroy every electronic device for four thousand kilometers. It would also kill every Peacekeeper unit in the sector, and disable every ship on Yvian's side. It wouldn't kill any Xill. They were too far away. Reba's reserve fleet was even farther, nearly ten thousand kilometers.

No, the Pulse wasn't an option. The second wave of Queenships were the last of what Pixa could muster. Admiral Zhukov had been willing to risk half of Pixa's Queens, but not more than half. If Yvian lost this fleet, there wouldn't be another. It would just be her and Skygem, against millions of Xill and whatever else Reba could throw at them. She would accomplish nothing, and she would die.

Attack was the only option. She had to try. Yvian's soul pointed at the human vessel. Pointed at a spot near the center of the ship, twenty meters or so from the screaming crystal child. "Hit there!" she ordered. "Hit it with everything we've got!"

Skygem responded. The crystal ship's panic gave way to fury the moment Yvian gave her a target. The Lucendian vessel thrummed, then thrummed harder. So hard it made Yvian's bones vibrate. The Skygem gathered herself for a full five seconds. Then she filled the void with light.

Yvian had known that Lucendian ships could store and process tremendous amounts of power. Their ability to absorb and channel energy was so prodigious it made them immune to conventional weapons. Yvian had known the crystal ships could release all that energy at once in the form of an anti-tech Pulse. Yvian had not known they could do the same thing through their beam emitters.

Skygem released a column of light so dense and bright it outshone the sector's Homestar. The light smashed into the Dreadnaught. The human vessel's shields held. Yvian counted. Two seconds. Four. Skygem howled, screaming into Yvian's soul as she funneled even more power into the strike. The emitters creaked, small fractures spreading across them. Still, the Dreadnaught held. Six seconds. Eight.

At nine seconds, the beam punched through. Not content with destroying the reactor, Skygem swept her light back and forth over the human ship, boiling away it's armor and slicing through its hull. In four more seconds, the Dreadnaught was severed in two.

The baby crystal stopped wailing. The anti-tech field ceased to be. Yvian yelled in triumph. She brought her soul back into her body just enough to reach down and grasp the leg of the downed Peacekeeper unit. "Kill the humans!" she shouted. "Save the babies!"

The Peacekeepers were moving before she'd finished speaking. Stinger units swept the void with cones of plasma, melting YEET rounds before they could pierce the shields of the Queenships. The Queens themselves opened fire, hundreds of beams burning their way through the battlecruisers gathered around the disabled human ships. Cruisers in the middle of each group dropped shields, pressing themselves against the Techjammers and activating their jumpdrives. It would be close, but Yvian had faith. The Peacekeepers wouldn't let the humans steal the babies away.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

The Skygem stopped thrumming. Her soul slumped. She really had hit the Dreadnaught with everything. If there weren't generators on board feeding her more power, the Lucendian vessel would be dying right now. As it was, the ship hung listlessly in the void. "It's alright," Yvian told her. "You did it."

Dimly, Yvian felt her body sag in relief. They'd done it. The babies were safe. The Queenships were intact. Reba's YEETs would be useless as long as the Stingers were filling the void with... Oh shit.

The Captain. She'd forgotten the Captain. He was somewhere in the void. A void that was now being swept with plasma fire. Mims was wearing a Peacekeeper tuxedo. He'd be invisible to sensors. While that would keep him safe from Reba, it also meant Yvian's forces could vaporize the man and not even know it. Yvian's body clenched up again. She'd already lost Lissa. If the Captain died, too...

She had to find him. But how? Skygem wouldn't be any more able to see him than the Peacekeepers were. Come to think of it, the crystal ship shouldn't have been able to see Yvian, either. Yvian had barely formed the question in her mind when Skygem answered. She hadn't found Yvian's body. She'd found Yvian's soul.

Yvian reached out. She touched the souls of the crying Lucendian ships. The four they'd saved, and the fifth held captive near the HUB. They were so loud. Yvian tried to tune them out. She needed to find the Captain.

There. Four more souls. Four? Two of them were next to Yvian. That would be Dr. Laswell and Yuriko. Another was heading towards one of the babies. Not by choice, Yvian guessed. It was scared. Scared and angry. It was...

"Lissa?"

It was her. Or at least, it wasn't Mims. She would recognize the bundle of trauma that was the human's mind. Yvian looked closer. She couldn't see her sister, but she did see eleven humans. Two of them were hauling something. Something Skygem couldn't detect.

"Lissa!"

It wasn't hard to guess what happened. Lissa had abandoned ship the same way Yvian had. She'd used her Bigger Better BFG to disable her target and tried to make a getaway. The humans had chased her. Lissa had lost the fight. Now they were dragging her to a ship. Or they would be, if the Peacekeepers weren't currently blowing all their ships out of the sky.

Yvian grinned as she turned her attention to the other soul. Mims. The Captain was moving fast. His mind was fury and fear and barely contained grief, ruthlessly crushed under the weight of focus and discipline. To Yvian's surprise, the human was alone. No pursuit. He was also nowhere near his original target. He was accelerating as fast as he could. Towards Lissa, Yvian realized. Or at least, towards the fleet Lissa had been attacking.

He wanted to rescue Lissa. Or avenge her. Or maybe he was hoping to take out another techjammer in a last ditch effort to complete the mission. Probably all three, knowing Mims. Whatever. He was alive, and so was Lissa.

Yvian's smug relief lasted all of two seconds before she realized the Captain was going to die. The Stinger units protecting the Queens were keeping their weapons oriented on Reba's YEETs instead of sweeping everything around them. Probably to avoid incinerating their Big Daddy and any hapless pixens they couldn't see. Unfortunately, the Captain's trajectory would take him right into their path of fire.

Mims could see it coming. His grim focus barely wavered as he tried to change course. It wouldn't be enough. The Captain's speed and momentum were too great, and the death cones of the Stinger units were too wide.

Yvian slammed her soul back into her body. She reached for the Peacekeeper unit's leg. It wasn't there. A steel hand clamped down on her shoulder. "This unit can hear you," a voice told her.

"Stop the Stingers," Yvian ordered. "Cease fire, now!"

"Affirmative."

Yvian dived back into the Skygem. The cones of death dissipated. Mims sailed through the space they had been a few seconds later. She'd better go get him. The Stingers were the only things keeping Reba's YEET Artillery Barges from turning the Queenships into debris.

Skygem didn't want to move. The crystal ship was exhausted after dumping all her power into the Dreadnaught attack. It took Yvian several seconds to get the girl in motion. Skygem grumbled, then grumbled harder when Yvian asked for more speed.

The Lucendian ship couldn't accelerate as fast as a Federation gladiator, but it was still much faster than a human in a jetpack. Skygem caught up to Mims in just under a minute. The ship's airlock was still open. The human flew himself inside. A thought from Yvian closed the airlock.

"Resume fire," Yvian ordered. "The Stingers can shoot again."

"Affirmative."

Plasma swept over the Skygem. The ship drank it greedily as she changed course, making her way to Yvian's sister. The XTRO agents who'd taken her had changed course at the sight of their ride home being blasted out of the sky. Now they were making for the Gate.

"No you don't, you motherless sons," Yvian felt the thrum as Skygem prepared to fire. The ship was low on power, but she had enough left for this. Her beam emitters creaked in protest as she prepared to fire.

"Stop." The Peacekeeper unit's hand clamped harder on Yvian's shoulder. "Do not fire."

Yvian asked Skygem to wait. She pulled herself back into her body enough to ask, "What? Why?"

"Lissa Kiver's voidarmor has been disabled," the machine explained. The machine pointed down at Yvian's side. A line peaked out from under her dress shirt. The other end of the line was connected to Yuriko's voidsuit. "An unpowered voidarmor only contains two minute's worth of air. One of the meatbag agents has attached themselves to Lissa to provide oxygen. Breaching the suit of that meatbag will vent the air and expose Lissa Kiver to the void."

"Crunch." Yvian checked the human's progress. They'd be in the Gate Effect by the time Skygem got there. "They're almost at the Gate."

"Kill all the meatbags except the two closest to Lissa Kiver," the Peacekeeper ordered. "This unit and Big Daddy Mims will retrieve the Mother of Pixa."

"They'll be in the Gate by the time we get there." Yvian protested.

"This unit knows." The machine paused. "Mims says do it, Yvian."

Why didn't he tell her himself? Yvian looked at the Captain. He gave a nod. Oh. Right. Yvian's comm was fried. She let out a breath and nodded back. "Alright. Affirmative." She reached back into the crystal ship. The Skygem hummed.

Firing the weapon hurt, but not as badly as Yvian feared. The emitters were still cracked, but they were channeling a lot less energy this time. Nine lances of light lashed out in quick succession. Nine humans lost their heads. Yvian came to the idle realization that Reba hadn't been the one to save her from that XTRO Agent.

"Open the airlock," the Peacekeeper ordered. Yvian complied. "Big Daddy Mims says not to follow us. Keep the Skygem on this side of the Gate."

Yvian wanted to argue, but the Peacekeeper didn't give her the chance. The machine released her shoulder and disappeared, launching itself out of the ship faster than the eye could see. Mims followed, a Bigger Better BFG clutched in his hands.

The last two XTRO agents dragged Lissa's helpless body into the Jumpate. Yvian cursed. The Skygem turned, pulling away. Six seconds later, Captain Mims and the unnamed Peacekeeper unit flew into the rippling blue light and disappeared.