Page 56 of Souls of Steel
It all happened so quickly. One moment, we were all making our way over The Fields of Mercury, and the next, a flare of crimson light erupted around the Charybdis. It went down, hit several chunks of space rock, and disappeared in the asteroid belt. For unknown reasons, the Typhon moved too sluggishly to intercept it.
I wasn’t doing much better. My mind went blank. All I could think about was Brendan’s insistence that we were missing something.
But why August? Unlike the rest of us, he didn’t have an influential family. He had grown up an orphan, one of the numerous children involved in the Star Fleet Program. His parents had presumably been Terran, although he’d never known them. The Grand Judiciary recruited plenty of soldiers that way, so his background had never been an issue at the academy. But originally, he had only been important because of his connection to Pollux.
Shelving the thought for a later date, I launched myself deeper into the asteroid belt. “What just happened, Cerberus?” I asked as I directed my chimera around the lethal space rock.
“The Charybdis went dormant mid-flight. You need to hurry. August is in trouble. The metal and his uniform are still keeping him protected up to a point, but he doesn’t have long.”
Unlike regular flight units, the chimeras weren’t equipped with a lot of oxygen supplies. We had a small emergency kit, but it couldn’t sustain August for too long in space. And that wasn’t the worst of it. Without the Tartarus diamond core, the chimera was pretty much a giant hunk of metal, impressive, but largely useless. The radiation coming from the Sun would cook August alive.
I intercepted the Charybdis before she could fall further away, but as I’d feared, she had already suffered heavy damage. Cursing, I resigned myself to the unavoidable. I couldn’t heal as quickly as Brendan did, but I’d have to make do. Saving August’s life was more important.
We were much too far from the ship and Hyperion Base 35 for me to carry Charybdis. The only way to make sure he survived was by bringing August inside the Cerberus.
Taking a deep breath, I opened my cockpit. Almost instantly, I was assaulted by the overwhelming heat and power of the void, the heat of the Sun threatening to swallow me whole. I forced myself to stay cognizant and took refuge in my connection with Cerberus. He mentally flinched when we cracked the Charybdis’s cockpit open, but we successfully fished August from inside anyway.
It took less than thirty seconds to drag him into my chimera, but it was still thirty seconds too long. The Cerberus’s aura had protected me from the worst of the radiation, but with the Charybdis dormant, August hadn’t been so lucky. He was already covered in burns, although it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been.
He was still breathing, thank Tartarus, unconscious but alive.
As I positioned him in my lap, the coms flared to life, activated without me having to do anything. “Knox, did you find him?” Pollux asked, in a panic.
“Yes. He’s alive, but only just. He needs help, now.”
Pollux cursed viciously. “Come back. We’re clearing a path now, but it’s crazy out here.”
I backtracked, going through the asteroid belt once again and heading toward Hyperion Base 35. It didn’t take me long to realize what Pollux meant. In my absence, the rest of the competitors had converged on Pollux, Brendan, and Selene, attempting to take them out of the fight. Normally, that wouldn’t have been a problem, but as I’d noticed earlier, the Typhon was moving more slowly than usual. Brendan had already taken a few bad blows, one of the snake heads smoking and out of commission.
Meanwhile, Pollux had lost the use of at least half of the wolf heads. I couldn’t be sure, but I suspected his navigational system was damaged. His flight path was unnatural, almost jerky, as if he was forcing himself to stay on track. If that was true, we were doing worse than I’d originally thought.
Selene was the only one with a functional chimera, and she made good use of her good fortune. She had launched herself into battle with almost desperate savagery. A blast from Sphinx’s claw kept one of the other competitors from attacking Pollux from behind. One of the chimera’s sharp wings tore straight through a small shuttle. Tachyon emissions flared around her, wild and almost out of control.
What was this insanity? How had this happened? Even if people didn’t like us that much, they should’ve acknowledged the value of our chimeras. We were priceless for Terra’s defense. This made no sense.
As soon as I showed up, the others started to disperse. We rushed forward, continuing on our journey to Hyperion Base 35.
August’s heart stopped twice on the way there. I buried my claws in his hip, willing him to hang on. “Don’t you dare die on us, you asshole. You wouldn’t want to make Selene cry, would you?”
Maybe he heard me, because his heart started beating again. Tachyons flickered madly under his skin and I tried to absorb as many as I could, to help him. “We’re very close now. Just a little while longer.”
I didn’t know how long it took for us to cross the finish line. It seemed like an eternity. When we finally landed on Hyperion Base 35, I couldn’t hear the announcer say our names either. My head was still spinning and I was close to hyperventilating.
The Grand Chimera Unit meant more to me than anything in the universe. They were, as Cerberus put it, my pack. My choices had alienated my parents and my brother, but I didn’t regret any of them, because they had brought me close to my fellow Chimera Warriors. To think we could lose one another this way, so stupidly… It was almost too much to bear.
Suppressing my anguish and dread, I opened the cockpit and carried August out. The staff at the base must’ve already been informed about what happened, because medics were waiting for us in the hangars. “Please give us Flight Lieutenant Cavallero’s body,” one of them said.
I didn’t appreciate his tone. He made it sound like August was already dead, and that was exactly what I was trying to avoid. “He’s still alive,” I growled, “and if you don’t make sure he stays that way, you’ll regret it.”
The doctor blanched and stared at my hands. I realized he must’ve seen my claws, but at this point, I couldn’t have cared less. “Lead the way,” I said with a sharp grin. “I’m coming with you to the med bay.”
“No,” another medic protested. “You both need to go through the decontamination shower.”
Technically, he was correct, since both of us had been exposed to radiation. But there was no time for something like that in August’s case. The decontamination shower took ages and by the time it ended, he’d be dead.
Maybe that was what he wanted. Maybe that was what they all wanted—to get rid of us, to destroy us, one by one. I wouldn’t let them. I’d tear them all apart, slowly and painfully. I’d make them burn and suffer, just like August had.
Selene and the others showed up before I could go through with my plans. “You’re all mad,” she told the doctors. “Set him down, Knox, and let me see him.”
