“You had to say it,” Talis said, finding her voice. “Okay, ready?”
He gave her a look that didn’t say yes.
Meran pushed past them, walked to the edge of the ramp, and jumped down as if the distance were no more than an arm span. She landed softly on her feet and jogged toward Wind Sabre.
Talis tried to envision the best landing that would look dignified but not destroy her knees. Decided to aim for a roll. She inhaled. Her legs tensed, knees bent.
The air went red. Her vision striped with black and white.
Heat burned her, a physical force that came up and shoved against her back. She was propelled forward. Never mind the graceful landing.
She struggled against the force of the blast to get her arms up to protect her head. Saw between them as the gritty texture of the ground came rushing toward her.
In detail, she felt the entire contour of the revolver in its holster under her arm as she landed on her side. Stars exploded in her vision. Her breath burst out of her, and her lungs spasmed, refusing to refill.
She rolled onto her back in time to watch a fireball consume the Yu’Nyun ship.
Wreckage spat out in every direction, and she had to roll again, her lungs burning from heat and smoke, to avoid a large chunk of what used to be gleaming hull. The black-scorched metal landed where her legs had been.
More metal and fire rained down around her, smacking into the sand and smoldering until the fuel was consumed.
Gasping for air, Talis tried to get up into a crouch. Tears welled in her eyes, against the pain in her chest and the stinging fumes of burning fuselage that rippled the air. Tiny breaths were all she could manage.
The ring lay in the sand. She grabbed it, and crawled to where Tisker had fallen. He was facedown, fresh blood from the wound in his arm soaking his jacket sleeve and the sand beneath him.
She dropped to the ground, and pulled him over, resting his head on her knees. Patted his cheek a few times, gently at first. When he didn’t respond, she struck with more desperation.
He gasped and blinked hard a few times. She felt like she could breathe again, too.
Squinting up at her, the sand on his face stuck in the lines of his expression, he looked two decades older.
“Hey, Cap,” he said. “We dead?”
“Not for lack of effort,” she said, and couldn’t help grinning. Then she winced as a stabbing pain in her side reminded her they still had a few chances for that fate.
“Come on, tie that wound off. Let’s get out of here.”
He sat up with a groan and checked himself over, air hissing through his teeth as he probed his knees and his wrists. He tore a strip of his shirt hem off and wrapped it around his arm.
The ground was littered with the odd shapes of wrecked Yu’Nyun fuselage. The air was filled with dark smoke, and visibility was jack-all. She pushed up to her feet. Wobbled a moment. Tried to take a deep breath and cursed at the pain.
“Broken rib,” she said to Tisker, response to the concern on his face. “At least.”
Among the wreckage she saw more than one pale body from the alien ship. Most of them in pieces. Some of them charred. Others painted in sapphire blue.
Then there was movement. A silhouette approached through the billowing smoke.
She called out the simula’s name, but the chuckle that echoed back was too familiar.
“Rotting hells,” she and Tisker said simultaneously.
Talis moved for her revolver, but the pistol in Hankirk’s hand was already up and aimed at her heart as he emerged from the smoke.
Chapter 30
“Well, Talis,” said Hankirk, with a smile that made her want to throttle him, “I see you finally changed your mind about selling that ring to the aliens.”
Talis balled her hand into a tight fist. The ring was a strange weight on her finger. The scorched remains of the Yu’Nyun ship smoldered around them. Heated metal popped and spat as the flames ran out of fuel, dampened by the dry sand. She fought against the instinct to cough as the smoke tortured her throat, wanting nothing more than to spare her ribs the torture.
“Doesn’t mean we’re of the same mind,” she said.
She hated Hankirk. Hated him as he stepped forward and held out his hand. He was dressed in his service finery again, though he hadn’t shaved since sometime before Subrosa. She wanted to spit at him. His ship must have been following them. Scooped him up out of the storm and tracked them to Fall Island.
She slipped the ring off her finger, hesitated before holding it out. The images of what Meran had done on board the Yu’Nyun ship replayed in her memory. If that had all been a response to Talis’s command, then handing over the ring to Hankirk was suicide at best.
But Hankirk had no idea what the ring could do. Or even about Meran. He still thought this was the same prize he’d been chasing since the beginning of this mess.
“Captain,” Tisker hissed, as she let Hankirk approach.
Bless him for not saying more, she thought, but shot him a warning look anyway. Hankirk didn’t seem to notice. His brown eyes sparkled, focused on his prize.
“We’ll get it back,” she said. It sounded more confident than she felt.
Hankirk chuckled, “You’ll have to tug those prayerlocks extra hard. Your luck has run out, Talis.”
“All our luck,” she said, putting some serious gravity into the statement.
Hankirk raised an eyebrow.
Talis hated to do it. Hated for Tisker to find out like this. No idea how she’d have preferred for him to find out. But not like this. She still had the ring. She needed a distraction, then she could rush Hankirk. Disarm him, get them out of there.
“Silus Cutter is dead,” she said.
There was silence, in which only the burning wreckage dared mutter in response.
Tisker moved behind her.
