“Come and get us, Katak... I’ve got four of your kin here who will be glad to return to the Hegemon. We’ll also need room for one more... guest.”

Roger that, ma’am. Calculating an intercept course. Sit tight. We’re on our way.”

“Received, Raptor. Nang out.”

“Ma’am... before you sign off, there are two here who would like to say hello.”

Josh jumped and moved to the copilot’s seat next to Katak. The pilot looked up from his open visor and freshly drained flight suit, his tongue retracted from his left eye, and he nodded at Josh to sit.

“Alysa! It’s good to hear your voice! It’s me and Sen! How is... everyone?”

“Everyone is good, really good! We’re glad to hear your voice too! We have a lot to talk about when we get—”

“Raptor, this is Impact.” Kadal’s voice urgently cut over Alysa’s. “We have two fleet-grade Kaizuko vessels leaving hyperspace and closing in on our position! They are launching fighters and moving into attack positions. A Brigantine and another Caravel. Twelve, make that fifteen, fighters incoming! Sending linked video now!”

“Hang on! We’re coming!” Josh shouted. Shock, rage, frustration, and fear came into his voice and showed on his face as he looked at Katak.

Josh’s frantic eyes and hand movements communicated in no uncertain terms that the pilot needed to start making with the flying!

Alysa’s resigned voice spoke next. “No, Josh. There’s nothing you can do. Raptor will be destroyed by these forces. You will be no help to us... you must return and warn the Hegemon-4 about these new threats! Command was right—”

Her voice cut out as the video showed the larger of the two ships hit the slowly evading squarish body of the Impact with a broad purple beam. The whole ship shuddered as the video cut out...

Josh looked up at Sen, a lost look in his eyes. ~... ~

~Don’t give up, brother! That was a tractor beam. They are taking the Impact whole and their crew alive. There is still time!~

But it was Ishan’s words that kept Josh’s feet under him.

The Tiger Affin talked as he and Lobo hurriedly sealed their EVAs and secured their helmets. “Ah, sirs... we’re going to go get the Lt.”

He waved his paw indicating himself and Lobo. Then inquisitively raised one fluffy, white brow at Josh and Sen. “We assume you two are coming along?”

*****

A metallic clunk resounded through the ship as Impact was harnessed to the superstructure of the Brigantine. A second clunk sounded as an external airlock was telescoped to its open outer door.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Kadal had insisted on leaving it open, arguing, “What is the sense in letting them destroy my ship? They are coming in regardless. When we beat them back, we will need her whole.”

Alysa acquiesced. It was fatalistic thinking, but correct. It also allowed her to launch grenades at the first group of boarders while they were still inside their external airlock.

It’s the little things in life that can keep you smiling. Eight hollow fummps sounded.

She and her team launched two grenades each through the open portal as the enemies’ footsteps pinged on the extended tunnel’s metal runner. Eight flashes of light shone on them as the incendiaries exploded, but not from inside the telescoping tube. These occurred outside the Impact, several hundred meters away and behind them. They all clearly saw the explosions through the ship’s main view port.

Someone, somehow, had teleported their grenades, neutralizing them while sending a clear message. Resistance is futile.

Looking down at the now-conscious Yabana, Alysa could see a deep fear in his eyes that far exceeded what she had seen when she impaled him to the Caravel’s deck plates. He had even pissed himself. A wide, icy patch on the crotch of his pants gave his terror away.

Bad sign.

She dropped to a prone position and manned her heavy mass-projectile weapon next to the rest of her team.

Their EVAs’ transceivers received a communication from an arrogant and almost chipper voice. “And I thought we might do this in a civilized fashion. Are you sure you want to fight? I really am short on time. I can promise you all a quick and relatively painless death if you tell me what I need to know, assuming, of course, it turns out to be true.”

Another grenade through the doorway was her only response. This one exploded twenty meters from Impact, rocking the ship and scorching the paint off the hull.

Okay... no more of those.

Time to change tactics. Signaling her team, she detonated the charges she had mounted on the door. Destroying the Brigantine’s extended tunnel, the Impact’s airlock and portal mountings. The atmosphere being pumped into the Impact through the docking extension rushed out through the new three-by-three-meter hole Alysa had just blown in the ship. It pulled lightly at the space marines anchored in place in their sealed EVAs.

Yabana gulped at the thinning air and started to cycle Essence to fight off the effects of the void again.

Alysa signaled to evacuate the ship. Better to die fighting in space than to be bottled up here. Turning to them, she saw Kadal’s helmet being stripped off his EVA. His face silently contorted as the vacuum took him—as it had already taken the other three on her team in the last five seconds.

An unseen force rigidly held her as she was pulled out of Impact’s shattered portal toward the Brigantine’s hangar bay. A Kaizuko encased in an indigo-tinged, transparent membrane glided next to her as she was brought into the Brigantine’s main hangar bay and dropped on the hangar’s deck plates. The same unseen force then stripped away her EVA and equipment, propelling them all out of the bay’s opening. The space-gliding Kaizuko landed next to her and waved his hand, elevating her to a standing position.

Still completely frozen, she stood there, eyes forward.

The shield encasing the obvious Cultivator blinked out and showed her attacker was tall, thin, and dressed in a black jumpsuit. A rapier with a caged handle hung at his side. The rapier’s sheath was held around his waist by a leather belt, buckled in glistening silver. His narrow shoulders struggled to fill a black flight jacket with the Kaizuko symbol for leader embroidered on the chest in gold.

“You made that so very tedious and costly!”

An unseen force slapped Alysa’s face and sent blood flying from her mouth.

“You damaged your ship, which I was going to use as partial recompense for the destruction of my Caravel.”

A second slap from the other direction rocked her eyes into her skull. Her nose and cheekbones fractured from the impact.

“And you have wasted so very much of my time!”

A third slap sent her flying to the deck plates snapping her leading left arm as the force holding her let go. She immediately started to cycle Essence to her wounds as the Kaizuko continued talking.

“But, on the bright side, you have brought Yabana back to me, the useless mongrel that he is...”

Yabana’s gagged and shackled form hit the deck next to her as he futilely attempted to communicate and wave his bound arms and legs. “What was that, Yabana? I couldn’t quite hear?” The leader’s face feigned courteous interest for a second before turning dark and danger- ous. He waved his hand toward the oblivion of vacuum. “You were always a bore to talk to anyway.”

Yabana started to writhe and whine piteously as he cycled Essence to his head and neck. He then began to scream as his head twisted past 180 degrees and was pulled from his shoulders with a series of subdued cracks and wet tearing sounds. His blood pumped for several seconds before slacking. The Kaizuko commander floated Yabana’s head before him and stared into his still-moving eyes as drops of blood continued to patter on the deck.

The commander’s voice was low and guttural as he talked through clenched teeth. “Your idiocy cost me a ship and so much more. Believe me... you are getting off very lightly!” The commander broke eye contact with Yabana’s head, and it fell heavily to the deck plates, splashing Alysa’s face in red.

He again grabbed her with his Force Attunement, bringing her off the ground at eye level, a single nose-length from his face.

Looking into her eyes with unmistakably restrained fury, he spoke tersely. “What shall we talk about?”