“Do you know where to go?” she panted.
He said nothing and picked up his pace, forcing her into a sprint. He bounded to the end of the hall and halted. Tayel whipped her head around. Jace, Shy, and Fehn still followed, their faces screwed up in various degrees of pain as the floor shuddered again. Tearing metal joined the screech of sirens, and Tayel stopped at Balcruf’s side. He sniffed the air.
She hung over her knees. “Hey, so…”
“Quiet,” he growled, his own guttural voice barely above a whisper. His ears twitched.
Tayel shut her mouth. Between the roar of twisting metal and the pitter patter of Jace’s steps approaching behind her, she could barely hear the sounds of muffled yells and footfalls echoed off the walls ahead.
Balcruf darted forward. Tayel swallowed one last gulp of air and made chase. The echoes took on more clarity as she sprinted after him toward the door at the end of the hall. The discordant yells took on a Varg-like timbre, and the clack clack clack of claws on metal accented the thudding footsteps. Her heart leapt. Balcruf was paving the way to the other Varg! It would only make sense if they were looking for the exit, too, so maybe the hangar bay was nearby. The thought of being off this deteriorating mothership pushed her faster. She broke through the automatic doorway after Balcruf. A crowd of Varg ran down the hall to their left.
“Brothers!” Balcruf cried. He bounded toward them.
Several Varg at the back of the pack turned, and their normally stern features softened as they laid eyes on their leader. One shoved past his kin. His ears drooped and his tail slid forward between his ankles as Balcruf stopped before him.
“We could not save them,” he murmured.
Tayel didn’t catch Balcruf’s response. Her heart slid into her throat anyway. She pushed the image of one of the Varg pounding an empty glass tube out of her head and directed Jace left out of the doorway.
“A-are we almost there?” he gasped.
“Yeah.” Or at least she really, really hoped so. “Follow Balcruf.”
Tayel waved for Shy to hurry. Shy shuffled toward the doorway a little faster, but the Varg started up into a run again before she came through, teeth bared.
“Let me take him,” Tayel said. “I think we’re almost there.”
“Thank you.” Shy slid out from under Fehn’s arm, letting Tayel take her place. “Follow Jace?”
Tayel nodded. Fehn weighed a ton against her, and his height made supporting him an awkward effort. Her side ached with the weird bent required to move him along. It got worse as the ship tilted further, her ankles burning from holding so much weight up against the angling surface. The crowd of Varg funneled through another automatic door at the end of the corridor.
“Come on, Fehn,” she grunted. “Work with me.”
He moaned and dug his fingers into her shoulder, pushing up against her to literally pull his own weight. With the Varg funneled through, the open doorway showed off a tilted view of the hangar bay beyond. A Rokkir ship stood against the backdrop of Modnik’s nighttime sky, a million stars twinkling even beyond the blueish tint of the bay entrance’s energy shield. Suddenly Fehn didn’t weigh so much. Tayel propelled them both forward at a jogger’s pace.
Shy waved frantically at them. “Hurry up!”
She disappeared around the edge of the doorway, and Tayel maintained her faster speed, ignoring Fehn’s groaning protest. He’d have to forgive her later when they both escaped this death trap alive.
The pungent smells of fuel and smoke made her eyes water as she pulled Fehn into the hangar bay. She staggered toward the ship they’d all come in on. A Varg helped Jace inside, and the engine sputtered to life, rattling the vessel’s hull. The vibrations numbed Tayel’s legs as she stumbled onboard and laid Fehn against a wall in the hold.
“T-thanks,” he muttered. His eyes watered, and a sheen of sweat over his face shined in the dim light.
She pressed Shy’s coat against his side. “Just hang on.”
She didn’t know anything about blood loss. Didn’t know how long he’d live with his side split open like that, or if anyone would be able to help him once they touched down to the surface. If they touched down to the surface.
“Ow, Red.”
He gripped her arm, and she eased up on the pressure she hadn’t realized she’d applied. The hold door slammed shut. A Varg pounded it twice — the signal to go. Two resounding chunks sounded as stabilizing locks disengaged from the bottom of the ship.
“Tayel!” Jace found her in the crowd and dropped to his knees. “Fehn. Are you okay?”
“Been better,” Fehn said.
Tayel’s swayed as the ship lifted. Varg filled the small space nearly wall to wall, and they shifted as the ground angled, their arms straining as they clung to the straps dangling from the ceiling. Balcruf barked orders somewhere near the cockpit, but in the murmur of growls she lost his meaning.
“Jace,” she said, “Can you stay with him?”
“Y-yeah, but where are you going?”
“Cockpit.”
“But what if — what if he—?”
Tayel’s brain filled in the unsaid: what if he dies? She swallowed. She didn’t know.
“You two are such” -Fehn waved one hand groggily through the air, his eyes fluttering rapidly under his lids—“downers.” He coughed.
The ship sped forward, and Tayel balanced herself against the wall to stand. “You just have to stay with him.” She caught the glint of tears in Jace’s eyes. “Jace, that’s all any of us can do right now.”
With his head feathers puffed, matted, and askew, Jace looked nothing short of exasperated, but he nodded slowly and sidled closer to Fehn. “Okay. I — I got him.”
Tayel squeezed his shoulder once. He was too fragile to have gone through all this. But all this had to be over soon. She pushed past the dozen Varg blocking her path to the cockpit entrance. Balcruf leaned against the left of it, still in the hold but poking his head in toward the pilot’s seat, his ears flattened against his skull.
“Faster! At your pace, we won’t make it before Magis seal the city,” he growled.
“I’m going as fast as I can with five thousand pounds of Varg onboard!” Shy snapped.
Balcruf glared as Tayel slipped past him into the small space behind the pilot’s seat. She took hold of its backrest.
Shy pulled their ride backward away from the mothership’s underside hangar bay. If Tayel hadn’t noticed the tilt in the halls before, she would have noticed it now. The whole structure angled downward toward Cryzoar, and the angle became more pronounced with each passing second. For a Moment, it looked like Shy was flying up to meet it, but she wasn’t. The mothership had started to fall. And it was falling fast.
“Oh xite,” Tayel breathed.
“Tayel?” Shy twisted the yoke and the nose of the ship veered left. “You have something to hold onto back there?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Hold tight.”
She steered the vessel downward. Tayel’s stomach flipped, and claws grating against metal sounded from the hold as Varg fought to stay standing. The gradual dip turned into half a nose dive. Below, Cryzoar awaited its fate. Fires burned throughout the city. Rokkir patrol ships darted above the streets, and people -like little dots — ran about the giant walls encircling the planet’s capitol. From atop those walls, dozens of tiny Varg-shaped blurs fired white beams in an arc from their feet to the sky. Thick white ice formed where the beams touched, and a giant dome started to grow upward around the city.
“Faster!” Balcruf barked.
“I’m trying!” Shy’s elbows extended fully as she thrust the yoke away from her.