I hold my breath. Every muscle in my body is tense as the scanners analyze the crates. The Bond has enhanced my sight, my vision, and my hearing, but it’s also enhanced my emotions. I can barely control my anxiety. I experience fear so raw that it makes my skin crawl.
Then, the drones grab the packages, pulling them through space toward the assault ships. The vessels open their cargo doors and take the crates inside.
Now, they just need to return to the mothership.
“Come on… Come on…” Vinicus is edgy - hungry. The Toad assault ships turn towards the Mothership. They seem to be moving in slow motion.
Aelon holds his position, waiting and demonstrating to the Toads that he’s watching to see if any of those assault ships try to pass the line in the metaphorical sand he’s drawn.
“Just test me,” Aelon breathes – making the dark promise under his breath. If it wasn’t for the heightened hearing of the Bond, I wouldn’t have caught it.
“Ten minutes to denotation,” Iunia murmurs, “I hope.”
“You hope?” I turn to Iunia nervously.
“I had only two minutes to mix up chemicals using a ten-thousand-year-old recipe. If it worked perfectly, then in nine minutes and forty-eight seconds, the reaction will be complete.”
Oh, Gods. What if the assault ships delay their return? What if the explosives don’t work?
Again, it’s as if Aelon can read my thoughts.
“Calm, Tasha. That Toad is going to be so greedy for the Orbs he’ll bring them right into his ship without question. First thing he’ll want to do is see them with his own eyes. I just wish I was there to see his expression when he realizes what we’ve done. He won’t have enough time to get them off his ship. They’ll be the last thing he sees.”
Aelon is so confident – but a minute’s delay could ruin this plan.
Tension fills the Reaver as the assault ships grow blurry. They’re entering the haze of the Toad Mothership shields. A moment later, they’re inside the immense, green ship.
Now, even if the explosives detonate early, they’ll wound the Mothership’s armor and exterior.
Wound.
Not cripple, or kill.
“Please, please, please,” I pray, hoping the Gods are listening. When I’m not in command, I don’t need to put on a front of bravery. I don’t have men and women depending on me for courage and reassurance. Instead, I can tap into Aelon’s inexhaustible well of strength.
“They’re going to dock! They’re going to dock!”
Sawoot’s shrill voice sounds through the sub-communications. It’s practically giddy. I want desperately to smack her for potentially jinxing this scheme – as if her words could affect the outcome of our plan.
The huge doors of the Mothership open. I feel awe as the assault ships dock inside. Even compared to The Instigator, that vessel is huge.
The big doors clamp shut, and I can barely believe it. Those Toads have just bypassed the walls of their armor with our Trojan Horse under their arm.
“Three minutes to denotation. It didn’t blow early. That’s good. That’s very fucking good.”
Iunia’s tense voice puts me on edge. Now all we need to do is wait.
The seconds pass by like hours. Assault ships – albeit only a small portion of the Toad fleet – buzz incessantly around the Mothership like flies around a pile of dung.
If those doors open again, we’re doomed. It will be to send out the entire assault fleet.
“Thirty seconds.”
My hands are clenched into tight balls. Aelon slowly backs the Reaver away, putting distance between us and the Mothership.
"Ten... nine... eight... seven... six... five..."
Please detonate. Please detonate...
"Four... three... two... one!"
Nothing happens.
The Mothership sits there – a huge beast, just waiting malevolently.
Then those massive loading bay doors start to open. The sub-communications light blinks.
“You fucking cunts! I’ll kill you!” Meelon screams through the sub-coms, and it’s like he’s yelling right into my ear.
His ship blasts every one of its countless las-cannons towards us.
Light beams out, blinding me as the immense firepower of the entire Mothership expends itself towards us, all in one moment. I rush forward, running to Aelon, hardly able to see anything in the blinding brightness. I grab onto his arm, feeling his sturdiness, and he turns to look at me.
His blue eyes are so, so deep.
We’re about to die – but at least the last thing I’ll see is his love. I feel it. I feel his love for me, and it calms the terror in my heart as the las-beams blast towards us.
Our Reaver whines as Aelon slams it into full power – every ounce of that fearsome Orb-Energy churning into the reverse thrusters. At the last instant, Aelon cancels all power to the engines, throwing it onto the forward shield.
He didn’t need it. The beams fade out a hundred meters in front of us. He judged the distance from the Toad Mothership perfectly.
Assault ships pour out of the Toad Mothership…
…just as it explodes into a ball of light.
Fire, wreckage, and glimmering blue-black Orb-Energy mix together – creating a supernova of screaming light and power as the Mothership explodes outward, sending a churning ribbon of energy pulsating out across the emptiness of space – brushing the assault ships aside like an angry bear swatting away flies.
Sawoot whoops in victory as our enemy explodes into that blinding light. Blue lightning arcs out from the dying ship. Just as we think it’s over, the Orbs themselves add to the explosion. I don’t know what triggered Iunia’s chemical explosion – what the chain reaction is, or why the normally indestructible Orbs combined with the detonation – but together, they annihilate the entire ship.
There’s nothing left.
Literally nothing – not even dust, ash or wreckage.
Instead, just twenty-six Orbs sit in space – having sent out a blinding ripple of power at the moment of explosion, and then sunk back into their swirling, sinister, serene form.
I blink. It’s like that immense, green hulk had never been there. I was expecting debris, dust, something – anything.
There’s nothing.
“Gods be damned. The Orbs deleted
