Page 161 of Scorching the Alien Empire
“Wait.Wait.” Princesa’s voice cuts through the tension, rising with alarm. She grips her pet cyloillar as if it might somehow shield her from what’s coming. “We’re not actually flying into—” Her sentence vanishes in a strangled shriek as the ship lurches forward. With a yelp, she stumbles back, then scrambles behind the throne for cover.
Drexios, by contrast, stands directly before the viewport, arms spread wide, eye wild with exhilaration. A manic laugh tears from his throat as he embraces the very fate I fight to prevent.
It happens in an instant.
The hyperspeed tunnel collapses into a whirl of churning chaos. Streaks of blinding light twist and distort as we burst into the asteroid field. The first impact strikes like a thunderclap—a massive rock colliding with our shields, sending a shockwave rippling through the ship. Then another. And another. TheRavager’s Ruingroans under the strain, shields blazing against the relentless barrage, each hit reverberating like hailstones against metal.
A smirk tugs at my lips.
My fingers dance across the controls, adjusting our trajectory by the millisecond, threading us through the labyrinth of drifting monoliths. The ship lurches and tilts, the thickened arcweave hull and Elerium engines straining against the immense task of maneuvering a war machine as if it were a Nebian Battlesuit.
The Rush ignites my veins, burning through me like liquid fire. My focus sharpens to crystalline clarity, my mind processing each movement, every shifting obstacle. Time slows. The streaks resolve into stars, into hulking asteroids, each one a potential death sentence.
I crave more.
More obstacles. More danger. More of the impossible challenges that push me beyond my limits.
Only amongst death, do I feel truly alive.
The ship tilts violently as we graze the edge of a massive asteroid, the shields flaring to absorb the impact. Drexios staggers back, gasping, patting himself down in sudden realization.
“How...” He inhales sharply. His hands move over his body, checking for missing limbs. “Cock. Balls. Head. All attached?” He turns to me, his single eye glinting with mischief. “Anyone seen my eye?”
A deep, triumphant laugh erupts from my throat.
Princesa’s shrieks, Drexios’ exhilaration, the viewport whirling with tumbling rock, the ship groaning beneath my command—it’s all chaos, utter chaos, brought to perfect order beneath my hands.
The shifting mass of blinking white on the display seizes my attention. The Seeker swarm, numbering in the millions, pours into the asteroid field from both directions. Their arrival is timed perfectly, just as I intended. They weave through the debris like darting znats, their small, oval forms allowing them to slip through crevices too narrow for us. Still, many collide with drifting rock, exploding into bursts of blue flame that are quickly snuffed out by the endless void. Their numbers are so vast that they obstruct one another, forming an uncoordinated tide of metal and destruction.
“Corsark, prime the damaged Shorthair vessels for self-destruction. Enrich their engines with Elerium,” I command, exhaling steadily, already anticipating their protests.
Corsark hesitates. “Enriched Elerium, War Chieftain?” The realization dawns in his voice before I can answer.
“Yeah, what the hell, babes?” Princesa’s indignant voice cuts in from behind the throne, her words muffled as she deliberately keeps it between herself and the swirling chaos outside the viewport. “Isn’t our Elerium worth a fortune? And you’re just going towaste iton the freaking space hobos?”
Itisa loss. But only a small one. A fraction of our supply in exchange for shattering this asteroid field.
“Corsark, distribute a single crate among the vessels. Now.” My voice sharpens, urgency pressing against my ribs. “What price is our survival?” I glance over my shoulder, catching Princesa’s gaze.
“That depends.” She snorts. “Drex-iot? I’dpayto be rid of the rude prick,” she sneers, then softens instantly, her voice turning into a ridiculous cooing. “But for wee Chug Bug, I’d spendallthe money in the universe to keep him safe. Isn’t that right, my little Chunker?” She strokes the silver rune on the creature’s rubbery back. Todd blinks up at her slowly, mandibles parting and closing in lazy disinterest.
And for my life?
The words form on my tongue, but I bite them back. A worthless question with an answer I already know—almost nothing. She believes me weak, diminished, lacking Arawnoth’s blessing. A mere blade without its edge.
The sour thought threatens to dampen my blazing exhilaration, but I push it away, burying it beneath the immediate, the necessary. I focus, my hands a blur over the shimmering controls as I adjust our course, threading us deeper into the drifting maze of rock.
The ship groans, a low, guttural protest against the violent maneuvering, its sheer mass forcing the arcweave hull and Elerium engines to their limits. Smaller fragments of rock pelt the shields in rapid succession, a constant drumbeat of impacts echoing through the hull. The kaleidoscopic hues outside twist and churn as we roll and bank, slipping through the asteroid field with precision so fine, so impossibly exact, that even the colossal formations grazing our shields seem orchestrated.
I barely breathe as I watch the navigational display, waiting.
Praying.
The Voidbanes must follow.
Their massive, pulsing dots hover at the edges of the debris field, hesitating. The entire battle—our survival—rests on this moment. If they refuse to enter, if they instead wait for us to emerge, we are dead. My legacy will be nothing but shattered wreckage lost in the void.
No.
