Leona struggled to cling to consciousness.
"Inside the deathcars . . . I . . . brought . . . Firebirds." She smiled shakily and hit her comm. "Firebirds—launch!"
Her head rolled back. Down the road, she saw the distant deathcars. Their hangars opened. The Firebirds burst out, wings unfolding, and soared.
Leona let her head hit the ground, and she smiled.
The Firebirds stormed overhead, firing their machine guns. Bullets tore into guard towers, knocking them down. Jade looked up at starfighters, screeching. Leona mustered all her strength and kicked her with both legs.
Jade flew back into the barrage of Firebird bullets.
Leona leaped up, grimaced in pain, and ran at a limp. She raced back toward the deathcars. Her marines ran with her. The huts were already emptied of prisoners; the survivors had made it into the deathcars.
Behind her, Leona heard Jade screaming. She looked over her shoulder to see her old friend standing on the road, trying to run, only for the Firebirds' barrage to keep hitting her, to knock her down again and again.
"Die now, traitor!" Ramses shouted from his Firebird. His starfighter soared, then swooped, pounding Jade with more bullets.
"We got strikers incoming!" Duncan shouted, waving at the marines from the deathcars. "Get your wee backsides over here!"
The sky rumbled.
Shrieks tore the air.
Leona looked up and saw them plunge through the dark clouds.
Strikers. The scorpions' reinforcements had arrived. The triangular ships swooped and unleashed their plasma.
The Inheritors ran.
Plasma slammed down behind them. Huts shattered and melted. A few of the slower Inheritors screamed, burning, falling. Leona ran as fast as she could, leg bleeding, fire clutching her coat. When she turned around, she could no longer see Jade, just the wall of fire.
"Come on, soldiers, come on!" Duncan reached out to them.
Leona leaped into the deathcar. A handful of other Inheritors followed. Most of the Inheritors were already inside, along with hundreds of gulock survivors. The other deathcars were rising into the sky, joining the Firebirds. Leona limped toward the helm, grabbed the controls, and blasted skyward.
They rose through smoke and clouds. Below them, the gulock was blazing, the towers falling, the wall crumbling. Above her, strikers filled the sky. There was too much smoke to see clearly, but Leona thought there were dozens of the enemy ships.
She hit a button, firing the deathcar's crude cannons. Bolts of plasma flew out and slammed into a striker. Around her, Firebirds and other deathcars were firing too. Flames and bullets sliced the clouds. A striker charged ahead, plasma bolts pumping out, and a deathcar shattered, burned, and spilled survivors. Leona cried out in horror, watching a hundred captives—rescued only moments ago—fall to the burning camp. They thumped against the courtyard and huts.
Roaring, Leona fired her deathcar's cannons, hitting the striker. Ramses's Firebird added its bullets, and the striker fell, crashed into the camp, and an explosion blasted upward. The sky shook. Another deathcar shattered, and prisoners burned, and Leona thought the world was ending.
But she kept soaring.
Around her, seven other deathcars rose with her.
Through fire and smoke and shards of metal, they breached the atmosphere and flew through open space.
Leona's hands were shaking. She was still bleeding. She forced herself to remain conscious, to keep flying. They were still too near the planet to use their warp engines. She tried to fly outward, to put distance between her and the gulock, but she saw them above.
Her heart sank.
More strikers, charging their way.
Too many to fight.
All this—just to die in the darkness. Leona stared at the incoming death, eyes wet. To die in space. Cold. Alone. Far from home. I'm sorry, Dad. I'm sorry, Earth. I failed you.
The strikers charged from every direction, trapping the handful of deathcars and their three Firebirds. Leona prepared to fire her guns, to die fighting for Earth. The system's small star shone ahead, cold and distant, and she thought of Earth's sun, and how she would never see its light glimmer upon the ocean.
The strikers fired, and the plasma rolled toward them.
And from the starlight, like eagles rising from dawn, they emerged.
Leona wept.
Around her, her fellow warriors cheered.
"The Inheritor fleet," she whispered.
The ISS Jerusalem led the charge, cannons blasting. The other battleships roared forth, all guns blazing.
The strikers spun toward fleet, and the barrage hit them, and the scorpion ships shattered.
A signal from the Jerusalem reached Leona. A voice spoke. "Hello, bitches! Need some help?"
Leona's eyes widened. She recognized that voice. It was Mairead! Mairead McQueen, that damn, crazy, redheaded madwoman!
"I told you to wait at the border, Firebug!" Leona cried.
"And I told you—I ain't missing the battle," said Mairead, laughing. "Had to come save your ass."
The strikers abandoned the deathcars, flying toward the Inheritor fleet, only to shatter under the storming artillery. The convoy of survivors flew forward and joined the fleet.
"Now let's get the hell out of here!" Leona shouted.
The fleet flew into the depths. Once they had reached a safe distance from the planet, Leona gave the order.
The Inheritor ships activated their azoth drives. Spacetime bent around them. The stars stretched into lines.
They shot into the distance, moving faster than light.
They flew back toward the Concord. Back toward safety. They flew away from hell.
But as they flew, Leona knew that she could never escape that gulock. That its terrors would forever haunt her nightmares. The cadaverous prisoners. The pile of flayed bodies. Her bullets delivering mercy to the dying. And finally—Jade, her old friend, laughing and burning in the fire.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Jade stood in the fire, laughing, arms raised as she burned.
Above her, the Inheritor fleet flew away, leaving the gulock a roaring, collapsing inferno. The flames raged around Jade. Her clothes melted. Her hair burned away. But the inferno could not hurt her.
She was Jade of the Skra-Shen, daughter of an emperor. She was holy.
She was a girl in a glittering cave.
She laughed, walking through the fire, claws extended, screaming. Always screaming.
She hugged her mother and father.
She howled at the sky, watching her enemies fly away, vowing vengeance.
She huddled in the shadows, waving a crystal sword as the monsters loomed.
I was a girl, she thought, tears steaming in the fire. I was a human child. I was in a glittering cave, and my mother sang me a song. A song of Earth.
No.
Lies.
Lies!
She roared. She wept as she walked through the flames. She fell, and the fire roared across her, and she crawled over bones and bullet cartridges.
I love you, Jade, her mother whispered.
I love you, Jade, said her younger sister, a toddler with huge brown eyes.
She crawled through the ashes, and she emerged from the blaze, shivering, naked, hairless, crying out to the sky.
Jade rose to her feet. Before her, the last surviving scorpions knelt.
"The goddess lives!" they whispered.
"Hail Jade the Deceiver, tamer of fire!" they cried.
She walked between them, her bare feet scattering ashes. The implants thrummed on her bald head, crackling, singed, barely glowing at all.
The memories flooded her.
Running with her parents.
Flying away from a secret base.
Calling out to Leona, her friend, wanting to stay with her but running, always running.