Cerridwen gazed at the floor to avoid looking at the dead Unions. In front of her eyes was still the sight of the enemy falling down with a punctured carotid, bleeding from the inside out. She couldn’t let go of the gun by which she took the Union’s life, a man who was only executing his duties. A deep shiver shook her entire body. She began to fear herself more than the chasing assailants. She wondered what else she was capable of and what she’d tell her father now.

I won’t tell him. It will break him down. His daughter can't be a killer.

She remembered every split second of that incident. While Antares was fighting with the Union, she was standing near the wall, observing the whole incident with eyes wide open. At some point, the Celestian dropped his weapon. Overcoming her paralyzing shock, she bent down and grabbed the gun. She aimed at the individuals wrestling on the ground, but she did not know which one to open fire on.

She was born and raised in a world belonging to the Union. The media presented this organisation as a deliverance for planets in war, as a foundation of enlightenment and order. Cerridwen saw through one of its lies. The world that the Union had shown was not a utopia. Poverty, squalor and street riots were just swept under the carpet.

Rebels should ideally be her enemy. They stole, killed and ravaged everything they came along their way. Antares disgusted her, but when he was lying on the floor, defeated by the stronger Ifrit, he seemed to be helpless, stripped of all his powers.

Her decision was based on the enormity of her wrath at the Union and a tiny grain of compassion for the rebel. She sent a bullet right into the Ifrit, below the reptile’s skull, shattering his spinal cord. Pushed by Antares, the enemy lay on the floor, blood pooling out around him.

Only shock accompanied her. She heard Antares saying something to her, and later walking away. Nothing really registered in her mind.

The Celestian girl dropped the gun and sat hunched under the tank. She pulled the hood over her head and nestled into the dusty material. It smelled like home, a warm and safe shelter, where nothing was missing and nobody was dead. Only then she paid attention to the hunger gripping her stomach. She recalled that she had an old bar in her belt pack, but she knew that the tightening in her throat and nausea at the very sight of the corpses would not let her swallow a single bite.

“Retreat now!” commanded Nadee, racing towards the Celestians.

They turned their heads, looking at her with twin expressions of surprise.

“Something is leaking from the tanks. So when the charges explode, everything will blow up!” She pointed to the cisterns, panting.

“Then defuse them,” barked Antares, clenching his fists. “Now!”

“I don’t have time,” she gasped out. “Run!”

She darted deeper into the store, and the Celestians followed her. The Kehrian woman led them out of the maze of tanks, right to the duct through which they’d entered.

The survival instinct sparked in Cerridwen, and she forgot everything she had done and rushed ahead. She sprang at the wall, grabbed the frame of the hatch and slipped into the narrow tunnel. Scuffing up clouds of grey dust, she crawled blindly like a clumsy mole. She reached the exit and jumped to the floor. A layer of ashy dust covered her black hoodie and settled on her hair like fresh snow.

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At that moment, an alarm resounded in the entire facility and pierced her ears. All her senses went haywire with panic, giving her conflicting information. She trusted only in her instincts, running across the store along a route brightened by Nadee’s headlamp. The entire world surrounding her seemed to be a maze, blurred and indistinct shapes of grey, pathways of no return.

The Celestian girl hopped in the sewers. She almost lost her balance while landing from a height of three metres. She clenched her teeth and grimaced, feeling a stabbing pain in her left ankle, but she did not slow down.

Thick ducts reduced the intensity of the alarm, letting Cerridwen concentrate on her hearing. She followed the sound of quick, nimble leaps and heavy steps of boots. Right behind her reverberated a similar stomp, rapid and almost morbid gasping interspersed with coughing.

“Five minutes to go!” shouted the Kehrian woman, glancing at the blue glow in her LiqWatch. “We’re outta here.”

She climbed up the ladder and threw the hatch cover aside. She jumped out of the sewers, looking around.

They found themselves in the middle of the airfield, half a kilometre away from their ship. Far behind them stood a few fighters covered in black foil. They rushed towards the cargo ship.

A few silhouettes emerged from behind the wall. Antares took out his gun and fired behind him. He did not care if he struck anyone or not. He just wanted to disorientate and slow down the enemies, who returned fire. He ducked, avoiding a bullet, but its whizzing trajectory resonated in his head for a few seconds.

Other shots echoed in the air around them, and long bars of light from the torches appeared on the ground. Someone on the other end of the square shouted out orders. In front of his eyes flashed a red dot. Antares raised his head and saw a quadrotor flying low over the airfield. The machine monitored the area and sent the data to the Unions to help them to locate the intruders.

Several metres separated him from the ship. He tensed his arm muscles and leapt ahead. He twisted around in the air and pulled the trigger, hitting the ship’s gangway with his back. Sparks erupted from the quadrotor, and it crashed to the concrete in a blaze of blue flames.

Nadee charged into the cockpit as soon as the others got in, jumped on the pilot seat and tapped the codes on the control panel. The vehicle lifted up, and Nadee turned the autopilot off. Using all her skills, she headed the machine almost vertically upwards.

Fighting with the breath-taking g-force and pain on his back, Antares crawled on to the seat next to Nadee and looked at the screen that showed the view from the rear camera. Black, amorphous silhouettes of buildings drowned in the brightness emanating from the facility ruins. Blindingly white, the expanding dome of light broke through the clouds of dust, extending all around in its diameter and claiming everything on its way.

Eventually, the light became so bright that the Celestian’s eyes could not tolerate it. Damaging blasts more forceful than the monsoon winds shook the ship, almost tearing it apart. Displays winked intermittently, casting a blue afterglow in the entire cockpit.

Despite the seizing cramps in his stomach, Antares opened his eyes. On the screen appeared a landscape that reminded him of a stone pit. There was completed destruction of the ruins. Instead of a nuclear plant, there darkened an enormous hole surrounded by a ring of flames several kilometres wide like the open eye of a rampaging beast, thirsty for destruction.

Raging winds became the main ally of this conflagration. It spread not only the fire but tons of toxins that had leaked from the tanks too. For the next thousands of years, that region of the planet would remain hostile. The ruins protruding from the ground threatened to turn everything into a dead wasteland. Even in the other parts of the continent, the soil would be polluted, delivering sick, skewed crops.

Antares gazed at space. He clenched his fingers on the armrests and froze. He’d dealt the rebellion a knock-out. Devi Kali had been somewhere in those ruins at the moment of explosion, and the chance to regain Zetherion had gone with her. His people, the rest of the rebels and the strongest of his allies, the Kehrians of Jalandhara, would never forgive him. Devi Kali had looked warily at his self-confidence right from the very beginning, but she’d endured him because of his fighting zeal.

One day you will cut yourself with your own sword, were her usual warning words for him.