The Sandman phases into reality from her falling body.
A spiked fist punctures the sable robes. The Sandman sails backward, gut-punched.
Michelle grabs the edge of a table to pull herself to her feet. In their hurry to escape the Tibbar, no one cared if she was trampled.
Replacing the Tibbar towering over the bleeding Sandman, a steroid-enhanced Ki-Ton grows bone spikes out of his fists.
Sulfur permeates the air.
The Sandman grabs the fallen Cordylus lizard. Opening its ivory mask to expose two sets of jaws. The first cracks the skull open. The second reversed set wrenches open the bone so a barbed tongue scoops out the insides.
Michelle loses all control of her digestive system. Vomit and bile pour from her lips and run down her jumpsuit without so much as a heave.
The trickles of sulfur mist subside.
Ki-Ton swings on the Sandman. A bone spike draws across the mask ripping a gorge across the ivory as a plow tills fresh soil. A humanoid in the throes of pleading for escape shatters, melting black goop onto the surface.
The Sandman fades.
Joenerbrawl appears, brandishing a sword in each of his four hands.
“Time to teach the Calthos warrior a lesson.” Ki-Ton attacks.
Sword meets with bone.
Michelle crawls toward Amye past the blood belching from the brainpan of a dead alien.
Driving Joe back with wild swings, the Calthos blades block Ki-Ton’s every thrust.
Michelle unsnaps the holding strap securing Amye’s blaster in its holster. The weapon slides out easily enough. Once free of the leather the full weight leaves her hand quaking. She uses both arms to steady the blaster. The kick startles her. Her first weapon discharge. The beam finds its mark. Ki-Ton’s extra bulk provides a broad side to hit.
A second face with two glowing eyes transforms on the back of Ki-Ton’s head. Michelle fires again. She has no control. The beam singes an arm.
Joe drives a blade into flesh near the burn.
Ki-Ton’s instinctual response lacks a howl of pain, but his forearms smash Joe into the wall, crumbling chunks of concrete surrounding him. Bone spikes retract back into Ki-Ton’s flesh as he reforms into his humanoid form. Blood trickles from five holes in Joe’s torso.
Michelle’s next shot blows chunks from the ceiling. Ki-Ton bats the blaster from her hand. He breaks the princess’s nose before flinging her over his shoulder.
Joe uses a sword as a crutch in order to stand.
“Don’t make me end you,” Ki-Ton warns.
“You shall not take her!”
Darting from Ki-Ton’s mouth, a barbed lizard tongue extends, lapping across Joe’s bleeding chest holes. The quick-acting neurotoxin renders Joe catatonic.
AMYE TUGS AT the bars of her cage until they bend.
Once she has an oval opening, she wiggles her shoulders. Inside her brain, she may be trapped, but she knows the next inches of squishing her body will hurt. It would bruise. She forces herself through, snagging her hips. Twist-pull, bend bar, wiggle-stretch. She drops to the floor.
The panel controls are not to operate the Dragon despite their appearance. They are to marionette her body.
Get up!
Instinct.
How do I jump-start my own body? Panic consumes her. She has to wake before the Sandman returns. Ki-Ton wounded it. William needs all the information about Sandmen.
She touches a button.
First, the hand jerks to her holster—empty.
Smerth’n hell, where is my gun?
Amye presses buttons opposite the left one she just touched. Her left arm pushes her body up.
Ratty hair hangs in her face.
She tries a button central on the panel. Her neck flips the hair so she can view the room.
On.
How does it control me?
She works the fingers. Her commlink chirps on. She activates the emergency beacon, doubting it will reach inside the rift. Next she puppets herself to retrieve her blaster.
If I recover it, I might have mastered the motor skills needed to assist Joe. She crawls through the pooling blood of the fallen Calthos warrior. The puncture holes in his back trickle blood. A wound she knows would be a volcano if he were Osirian.
She cracks open the compact-sized disk, scooping orange gel to rub around the wound. She drops a glop inside the hole.
I don’t know how much will heal, but every bit will preserve your life. Amye dances her fingers among the buttons. Buttons vanish from the control, and each of her movements cease to be a jerky robot move.
I’m regaining control of myself.
Warm breath tickles her neck. The tease. The touch leaves her limp as she falls back into the control station chair.
She reaches through the bars to grab the damaged masked Sandman as he replaces all the controls at the station.
“IS COMMANDER REYNARD fairing any better?”
“He’s barely vacated his quarters since he returned from the Sandmen,” JC reports.
“Australia said as much. I thought as a telepath you’d have more insight into his current condition,” Maxtin says.
JC stares into the blackness outside Admiral Maxtin’s office window. No stars exist inside the Riftgate. “Then I doubt I’ve anything further to offer. You know I legally won’t scan him, and since he’s not a UCP citizen or a UCP Academy graduate, you have no jurisdiction to order me to.”
“You’ve spent your career with loose interpretation of Eir Basilica rules and doctrine.”
“Grand rules. Like not telling Amye that her thoughts spill from her mind like a dam in springtime when she drinks. Informing the masses about using mind altering substances around us would destroy our advantage over Normals.”
“The Eir Basilica covering up a great many secrets across the galaxy,” Maxtin says.
“Covering up the slaughter of survivors of the Tibbar invasion. None on the council have to gaze into those blue eyes knowing the truth,” JC says.
“JC, of all the crew of the Silver Dragon, you keep the deepest of secrets.”
“Like our first meeting thirty years ago?” She places a palm on the clear durasteel, expecting
