Page 75 of Broken Triad

“They will be guarded by hundreds of Reavers. You will have only a brief window. I can get you in, close enough to obliterate her flagship.” His lips curl back. “It is said that her second-born son is in command. Let her feel true grief.”

Bruton—her second-born son, a terror of a man who braves the Rift to attack our forces. He’s credited with hundreds of kills already, he and his dread triad. My fist clenches around the hilt of my Orb-Blade. I would face him in honorable combat, my triad against his. To destroy him in this way…

The choice is already made. There is no going back.

“We will not fail you, my lord.”

He looks straight through me. I wonder if it is true, that he can see the future. He nods, and ends the communication, satisfied that we will finish the job.

We sit back in our seats, heavy, the weight of a world on our backs.

“I can smell her.” Bolden states the words emotionlessly, the first thing he’s said since we took our final assignment.

“It is in your head,” responds Khra, sorrow filling his voice.

It will all be over soon.

We can only bring her pain. Soon, we’ll be in the only place we can no longer hurt her.

“Activating Orb-Shift.” I say my final command. There is nothing more to say. My hand is on the detonation button, ready to obliterate ourselves and deal the crushing blow that was fated the moment we shift in.

My triad said our goodbyes when we plunged the Scorp venom in our veins. That venom changed us, but it could not change our true selves, beings capable only of inflicting violence and devastation.

Lola gave me a taste of something else. Something more. Saving her father, protecting her, building something that felt real…

But it cannot last. Rage burns in me, green, venomous rage, until I cannot even think, filled with anger at the false Queen and her triad, anger at myself for being too weak, wishing I was someone else, anyone else, someone who could spend centuries, millennia with the woman who brought color back in my life, but I know, deep down, that all I will bring is death.

We cannot change who we are.

I let that rage boil up, and it reflects in my triad, the fires of our anger fueling each other, until we are so filled with fury that it sears away all the pain of being a man. I start the Orb-Drive. I do not need to punch in coordinates. Obsidian is guiding us. We are his sword.

One moment, I am piloting us above Trebulous.

The next, I am in nothingness, a nothingness deep as death. I’m cold. My eyes are open, but I see nothing. I have no body, yet my skin goosebumps, as if I am a phantom that can feel only pain, a frisson running down whatever essence I am in this space between worlds, and I feel them.

Khra and Bolden. With me, until the end, their auras filled with anger and grief for the last time. I will lead them to salvation.

I will lead them to peace.

Something is coming for us. Something huge and dark has sensed us in the Rift. There is no light, but it can see, and it hungers for our souls. The outline of a thousand razor-sharp teeth, a gaping maw opening, and as the endless mouth closes, we blink back into reality.

We emerge.

We are deep in the blackness of space, but it is not empty. Alarms scream out in my Reaver, the display showing hundreds of red dots as we are targeted by las-cannons and missiles.

We’re within a hundred meters of a behemoth of a ship, a massive, pure white flagship surrounded by Reavers. I wave my hand, silencing the AI, and all is quiet as I press down against the detonator.

But my finger stops. It shakes as I try to end it all.

“Do it!” Bolden’s voice is a rasp. Sweat drips from my forehead. My hand shakes. The huge ship is moving away from us, turning slowly. It dares not fire, not when their targeting array shows our deadly payload and they know that shooting us down would damn them. The huge bulk of the ship slowly moves, but I follow it, keeping pinned to it like a barnacle, maneuvering my Reaver closer to the center where we will deal a crippling blow. Through my viewport, I can see the endless length of the ship, the batteries of missiles and the shields, but Obsidian shifted us so close we’re underneath their highest-powered shields. The explosion will be reflected back, contained instead of dissipating into space. They are damned, and so are we.

My entire arm is tensed up, flexed, my head throbbing with pressure. I want to press down on the button so badly, but my body rebels against me as the image of Lola appears in my mind’s eye as clear as if she is standing next to me. She cries. Tears stream down her cheeks as I imagine her learning what happened to us.

I yell out in grief, tortured, needing release yet not getting it, wanting her to be free of us yet unable to leave her forever, and the comms-link blinks red.

It is coming from the flagship itself.

I answer, without knowing why.

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