The Secari Connection (Memories of Earth Book 7) by James David Victor

Author:James David Victor [Victor, James David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fairfield Publishing
Published: 2020-03-29T22:00:00+00:00

11

Payload

Sector 5: Non-Aligned Space

“Patch!?” Dalia staggered to one side of the hold, coughing from the bitter and acrid white smoke that had suddenly vented, unexpectedly from one end of the Sul’Daar apocalypse missile.

But it wasn’t just the choking smoke that disturbed her. It was the burst of teeth-grating nausea and icepick headache that made the Ilythian want to throw up. Dalia felt her skin at turns goosebump with cold or sweat with heat.

A massive burst of PK energy, the Ilythian, herself a PK like all the rest of her people, knew. It had to be Jake.

But this feeling was also layered with a deep, unsettling existential terror as well. The mind of the distant Archon, transmitted through the young human PK.

“Dee?” There was a cough as a form staggered out of the choking clouds of white steam. It was the Voider, still in his ridiculous patched and modified service jacket, suit and trousers brimming with tools—but the younger man’s eyes were streaming with blood.

“Dear stars!” Dalia moved to grab Patch’s shoulders and steady him, dragging him toward where she thought the exit to the hold had to be.

“Urk… I vented the coolant mixture… But I didn’t—” The human coughed weakly. “—think it would…”

“No, this isn’t the propellant steam,” Dalia said grimly as she squinted, her eyes burning and her head still hammering with pain. “This is something entirely different.” One edge of the open bulkhead door to the storage hold loomed out of the mist, as did the shadowy form of one of the pirates, already swinging something through the air at them both.

The pirate screamed as she swung the heavy blaster she had been holding.

Stars! Dalia had a moment to drop Patch as she swung up one arm—

“Hss!” She didn’t have time to direct her blocking forearm right, and the edge of the blaster struck her near her elbow, before the pirate with the bleeding eyes pulled the trigger.

The burning particles surged past Dalia’s shoulder, and she felt the heat against her cheek and smelled the incineration of burning hair as she jabbed forward with the same blocking hand, striking the pirate woman with the heel of her palm, sending her stumbling backward.

Dalia grabbed the woman’s much smaller blaster pistol from her hip belt, reversed the grip, and fired.

FZZT! The acrid smoke was too dense to see if Dalia had stopped their opponent completely, but there was a heavy thump in the mists as something hit the floor.

“Patch!?” Dalia turned, stretching out a free hand to seize the Void engineer’s own reaching one where he had stumbled against the wall, and the Ilythian was pulling the human into the corridor beyond—and through the vented coolant steam toward where Anders and Jake were being held.

“Ack!” A cough from up ahead as another shape emerged out of the choking mist—no, not one shape, three. Dalia was already pointing her stolen pistol at the lead human, for the shape to suddenly throw his hands in the air.

“Don’t shoot!” the older human coughed.

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