‘He’s bolting west-north, looping toward the Maw sector,’ Kaal reported. ‘His ship is parked somewhere out there.’
Mak’s rasp was clipped. ‘Don’t engage. We’ll box him in and herd him to you.’
Their two crafts, matte-black and modified for combat speed, slipped into position with seamless synchronicity.
Mak took the lead, arcing to Deimos’ right and nudging his trajectory with calibrated thruster bursts. Koda mirrored him on the left.
Vale attempted to outmaneuver them.
Mak smirked. ‘Cute.’
He flicked his comm to Kaal. ‘Bring the rear deck open. We’re delivering a gift.’
Kaal’s timbre crackled in. ‘Receiving. Coordinates locked. I’ll scoop him on your mark.’
Mak peeled off and executed a loop, then dropped velocity till the front of his vessel’s nose aligned with Deimos’ path.
Koda fired a warning burst across Vale’s bow, guiding him clean toward the position Mak had calculated earlier, right into the rear of Kaal’s gunship.
The massive vessel loomed ahead, cloaked until now in shadow and silence.
The airlock unsealed, revealing a vast, gaping maw of steel, lit by docking guides.
Mak triggered the override spike, lancing Vale’s skiff with a virus that jammed his nav controls and forced his autopilot to reroute, straight into the gunship’s gravity well.
Vale’s vessel shook, lights flickering, engines shrieking as it was pulled against its will. Mak observed the spiral on his HUD with grim satisfaction.
‘Welcome to the party,’ he muttered.
Deimos’s flyer locked down with a final jolt inside Kaal’s hold.
Mak followed Koda in, landing hard beside it as the deck sealed shut again.
Mak soared out of their flyer, his pair of silenced weapons primed, and landed in a crouch on the rear of the panel.
His shoes, with gel soles crafted for action like this, helped steady him.
Cold asfokk, he targeted the back window and aimed for the glass using the muzzle of one gun.
An ingenious safety emergency hammer, designed with a hardened steel tip, was built into the butt of the weapon, shattering the tempered sheet with his strike.
Deimos’s face stared up at him as the shards fell away, his mouth agape in a soundless wail. Mak made his three successive shots, a trio of laser bolts in close succession.
One each for Deimos’kinaisin the cruiser who were firing at him, un-aliving them in seconds.
The third, meant for Deimos, hit its mark, sending him falling back, his physique jerking with every impact.
However, instead of convulsing in death, the man’s face contorted, and his body spasmed, his features twisting and distorting as the air around him crackled with dark energy.
His scream was silent but visceral, a soundless wail that echoed in Mak’s mind as shards of light shattered from his form and fell away like broken glass.
When the transformation was complete, Mak blinked in shock.
Deimos’s face lost all humanity.
It morphed into a grotesque visage, his countenance warped into jagged angles, his eyes glowing with violet fury.
A deep, guttural growl emanated from his throat, and Mak stepped back, disbelief freezing him in place.
