“Jase says we give her a chance,” another man, named Lyal, said with a shrug. I flexed my fists but didn’t give them any other sign that I had heard them. They weren’t whispering very carefully; they didn’t care if I heard their doubt.
“… will be best if you keep practicing,” Aimer had continued to speak while I eavesdropped.
As she finished the sentence, she whipped the knife at me again. It seemed to fly at me even faster this time, and a quick leap of fear closed my throat, but I grasped that fear and focused on the sheen of the tip of the blade lasered at my head, then directed the blade to whip around, mid-flight, and head straight back to Aimer.
“Fantastic!” she shouted. She pointed downward, and the blade slowed to a gentle flow so she could catch it in her hand and smiled at me. “That was perfect! I think if you can—”
A wicked hole was ripped through the side of the transport right where Criper and Lyal were sitting, and they were sucked out the side, metal bending out, equipment flushing through the sudden hole, cargo ropes flicking at the sudden space, out into the air, the transport veering off wildly in that direction, diving into a spiral.
Aimer grabbed my body with telekinesis and slammed me up into the transport's winding roof, and I grabbed onto the bending pipes and ropes, saved from being sucked out into the open air and free-fall. I gasped quickly to catch my breath, whispered thanks, and clung for my life to bare pipes as cries of command echoed in my brain, and warning lights flared.
Fire flared from the pilot’s cabin as another surface-to-air-missile rocketed through our transport. The explosion was deafening, my ears ringing, the flash blinding. Smoke billowed, and fear strangled my heart, sharp pangs of breathlessness in my chest. We had thought we were flying below their radar: we were wrong.
Smoke was swept away as we whipped around in circles. I blinked against its thickness and the black spots I still saw from the blinding explosion. Alpha Jase was standing strong in the blown hole anchored by Cassala and LeiLei’s telekinesis Will, as his hands wove demands out into the spinning world, cushioning the fall for Lyal and Criper in some magical dance with destiny. His blonde hair curled wildly in the wind, his cloak flashing around him, sand rushing in, framing him with a strange glow, and I could see the desert hills rushing up at us from below in quick whips of spinning abandon as the transport spiraled out of control toward the ground.
Another rocket tore through the starboard and ripped all the way through the cabin and out the other side. We began to spin further off-kilter, and my head slammed into one of the pipes I was clinging to, my legs dangling and swinging into the open cabin below, struggling to find a tether on the side of the roof. Lights burst in my brain and then I realized lights were also blinking wildly in the cabin and buzzers were going off.
“We are going to crash. Hold tightly to where you are braced. Prepare for battle. They will be coming for us.” Aimer’s words were telepathic, a message I was still uncomfortable receiving at this point, but their even pace helped calm the erratic flight of my pulse’s rampant beat and my sharp breathing.
The scream ripped from my chest was guttural and animal and irresistible as the transport smashed into the surface of the planet. Smoke obscured everything for a moment, and sand pelted my face as the horrible grating grinding sound of metal being thrashed apart filled my ears. Others were yelling, too. My head smacked the pipe again, and I blacked out for a moment, then there was blood everywhere in my eyes, and I was smearing my face with my sleeve to clear it.
The smoke and sand cleared. The floor I was staring at from my secure place on the ceiling was crumpled, the jumpseats smashing like tin cans torn into ribbons. Sand had flooded in the tangled mess of holes in the floor and sides. We were smashed into the ground sideways.
I tried to assess the situation from where I hung in the pipes up above the others on the uneven floorboards, fire flickering from the pilot’s pit, walls shredded of the transport, two of our Crew somewhere outside the ship, hopefully alive, two others laying smashed into unearthly contortions being checked by the Trio and seeming to be deemed dead.
That left nine of us. Cassala waved me hurriedly down as Jase peered out the ragged wall to see if there were enemies upon us yet. I slithered into a hanging position from the pipes and Cassala waved her hand to float me down from the ceiling, rather than the dreaded twelve-foot drop.
Still, as I landed, I gasped in pain and crumpled to my right knee. I stared at my right thigh and placed my hand on it, smearing away blood and shredded pant lining. Blood was gushing from a gash in the meat of my quad, torn apart by jagged metal or perhaps by the passing rocket’s fins. I hadn’t registered the pain during all the commotion, but as soon as I placed weight on that leg, knives of radiating agony shot all the way down to my toes and up through my back from tender nerves.
I looked around for something to brace myself with as I stood and saw, just to the right of my hand where I had crashed to my knees, was Jase’s little box. The wooden case of the dodecahedron had been crushed, and I could see a little ring peeking from the inside out of the sawdust. It was pure black, made from stone, winding around, wraithlike, a half dozen halos of carbon metal winding in and out of each other. I reached for it and slipped it from its little cushion and put
