Page 60 of Fated to the Dragon Alien
“Don’t surrender.” Rek’tor swiveled in his seat and looked at Stavian. “Cerani said, ‘If we’re going to die, let’s die on our own terms.’ I’m inclined to agree with her.”
Stavian didn’t move. He pictured Cerani standing behind him, chin raised, eyes burning the way they had on the mine floor when she said she wouldn’t beg for mercy. She’d rather perish than live as a prisoner of the Axis. She deserved more than survival—she deserved freedom.
“You surrender,” Jorr added, “and she’ll never forgive you.”
Stavian glanced down at his hands. They didn’t shake as he rested them on the arms of the captain’s chair. Somehow, that surprised him. He thought this would be harder. Bendahn’s projection waited for his response as her words still echoed through him. His heartbeat thumped once, hard.
There was one more bit of information he needed to get out of her before he did what he had to do. “What was the agreement?”
Bendahn gave the barest tilt of her head. “What?”
“You said, ‘We honored our agreement with her…’” he said. “Who was ‘her’?”
She hesitated. Her throat shifted, too subtle for most to catch. Her gaze darted at something to her left—just a brief glance offscreen—and her mouth opened, then closed again. “It’s not relevant now.”
“Yes, it is.” Stavian leaned forward, voice cold. “I’ll ask again. What agreement did you make, and who was it with?”
“Stavian—” Bendahn straightened, but her expression was starting to fray. “An agreement was made shortly after you hatched, yes. And if you surrender now, I’ll tell you everything.” Her tone turned silky, as if she believed she’d just come upon the key to making him comply. “All of it. The truth about your species. Your family. What we burned and what little we kept. I’ll give you what you want. Just stop this now.”
“She’s bluffing,” Jorr said through his teeth. “Or lying.”
“Or both. That’s all the Axis do,” Rek’tor said, his tail flicking once behind him.
Stavian stared at the projection. At the cracks starting to slip into Bendahn’s polished mask. The strain behind the offer. Not rage. Not discipline.
Desperation.
She was afraid of Cerani. Of him. And that told him everything he needed to know.
Stavian’s fingers hovered above the comm panel. The projection of Bendahn still waited, serene and smug. She thought he would break. That after everything, all it would take was a blade held to the back of the one person he couldn’t afford to lose.
He looked at her and felt nothing but wrath. She had taken his people and erased them. Now she’d come for his future. He wasn’t giving it to her.
He didn’t answer.
He cut the feed.
He turned toward the crew. “Shields to maximum,” he said. “Evasive vector. Cloaked ships or not—we punch through them. Rek’tor, make this ship dance.”
“Yes, Controller,” he replied, eyes on his screen and hands at the controls.
“Rinter.” Stavian turned to the engineer. “We need more power.”
“Okay.” The young male frowned over his many screens, adjusting here, shifting there. “Found thirty-five percent more for the thrusters.”
“I knew you wouldn’t take the deal,” Jorr said, as he swung back to weapons and gazed through his target-finder scope. “Cerani would have killed you herself.”
Stavian figured that was probably true. He sincerely hoped to ask her about it when they were through this. But first, they needed to actually make it out of there alive.
Talla adjusted the nav course. “Trajectory is rerouted. We’ll slingshot through the debris in thirty seconds.”
Rek’tor grinned, hands on the flight console as once-cloaked ships came into view, one by one. “Let’s give your High Council hellfire, Controller.”
“The controller is dead,” Stavian said through his teeth, glaring at the ships that used to be ally ships. “My name is Stavian.”
The ESS Mirka surged toward the stars, raining projectile fire and blaster flares, with four enemy ships hot on their tail. FK-22R and the DeLink Mine shrank into shadow—but ahead, the space opened wide. The entire Axis fleet could be at their backs. They were not returning.
EIGHTEEN
