Chapter Text
Hurried footfalls took the crew of the Morning Star through the wreckage of the Demaxian facility. Green lightning snaked across the otherwise purple-black skies visible through those great cuts in the facility walls; flashes of neon color illuminating an otherwise lifeless planetoid.
Lux walked on bare feet, draped only in the cloak that Sona had given her: her first gift, given without, as far as Lux knew, obligation or expectation. Sona's eyes had something soft and sad in them that Lux could not stop thinking about; looking into them had built a resonance, a recognition within her that she and Sona were harmonized by the same warm golden glow, reaching out to itself.
And then there was Jinx, laughing, effervescent, animated with joy and vivacity from head to toe like no other being Lux had ever laid her eyes upon...at the first touch of her hand, something in Lux never wanted to let go.
She should have feared these people more. She knew that. They were all armed with well-used weapons and had the smell of blood upon them, the natural motion of experienced warriors.
Just like the broken bodies around her had been.
Strike. Retreat.
Guard.
Opening. Strike…
The crunch of dirt and rubble beneath her companions’ boots on what had once been pristine Demaxian floors sounded loud in her ears. But she could be quiet. They had made her quiet…
“High Marshal, you can see the results of our initial tests. She has outperformed all other assets in the following areas…”
Bare toes shifted, muscle-memory altering each footstep to distribute her weight stealthily. As she moved, Lux stared ahead, unblinking, but she avoided open doorways, her peripheral vision checking for motion, never exposing her blind spots.
“As she should.”
“…it seems the programming upload was unilaterally successful, except –”
“Except?”
Her breathing came swifter as more memories flooded back. Flashes of exertion, adrenaline, pain…
“…we…are having some difficulties with her kill switch.”
Her pain, and that of others. Standing over a huddled body, steel in her grip, facing upraised hands, shaking with fear, pleading eyes…
“Difficulties.”
“H-high Marshal – in all the tests on dummy and automated targets she performs phenomenally, but – if we try with live targets she…she refuses, ma’am.”
Her steel, lowering, her heart pounding, her head shaking as she stumbled back.
“She resists the protocols?”
“We haven’t been – please forgive me, we have not been successful with overriding her free will. She won’t kill them – because she doesn’t want to.”
“This is a problem. I should not have to explain why, Director.”
“Y-yes, I understand-”
Lux is between Then and Now. She has stopped to stare at the room. To anyone else’s eyes it is simply a wide, empty space with forceglas viewing panels along the walls.
But she remembers every scar she put on the reinforced walls in training.
“Do you? You have the data, but I wonder if you truly comprehend what she is capable of. That power must be reigned in, Director. It must be utterly subservient to our will. Any lapse of control could prove catastrophic to the Empire.”
Their eyes. Living eyes, and virtual eyes, cameras, sensors, monitors. Always on her. Not a breath or a skipped heartbeat unrecorded. Not a moment’s space to breathe…
To weep.
“I understand.”
“I hope that you do. The finest blade is worthless if it cuts the hand that wields it. If you cannot establish full control, understand that no matter the sunk cost, this project will be terminated and its subjects aborted. We will go back to formula, is that clear?”
She pauses. She remembers this room. Beyond the glass, the reflection of the cowering chief scientist beside a tower of a woman, flowing golden hair and a pitiless marble face…
“Until you have confirmation, I want her in tank stasis whenever she is not fully activated, and all her vitals monitored. No window to form rebellious thoughts. The spark must be snuffed before it grows. See to it, Director.”
Needles, tubes, respiration masks, bubbles whispering over her naked skin, through the floating clouds of her hair. Darkness ebbing the light, and the rising tides of choking, suffocating sleep…
“Do not dream sweetly, Luxanna,” the woman’s voice, lowering, but never softening, “Don’t dream at all…”
“Lux?”
Jinx tilted her head at the strange girl, creeping closer to whisper her name, “Lux?”
She’d stopped, clutching Sona’s robe about her throat, staring into what looked to Jinx like a bigassed boring empty room – oh wait no those were photann-scars on the wall – definitely some solid rounds, plasma burns and vibroblade marks too…
And a lot of laser cuts, clean and precise.
“Oh,” Jinx grinned, “This your playground?”
Lux’s eyes shifted color. Always that incredibly vivid silver-blue ring, like the corona around a star, but at their edges it bled now into a darker blue instead of the pinkish hue they’d had at first.
She snapped out of whatever reverie had her and looked directly at Jinx. Then she shivered like a small animal.
“Another bad place,” she murmured, “I want to go out of here.”
She reached out and took Jinx’s hand, tugging her along the corridor, toward the entrance of the facility.
Jinx frowned.
There were silvery tears on her cheeks. That wasn’t right.
“You got it, Starbeam,” Jinx said, squeezing her warm, warm hand and scrambling to keep up with her, the salvage cart bouncing in her wake, “You’ll love the Morning Star, I promise. The best ship in the galaxy – in any galaxy! We’ve got on-board entertainment, recreational activities – ooh, I bet you’d be really good at Super Ponk Fighter X –”
Despite everything, that got a little sobbed giggle out of Lux. “I do not have any idea what you’re talking about…”
Hah! A laugh. That’s a good start.
“…well!” Jinx beamed, “Do you sing? Cuz we’ve got karaoke too, just don’t get Yasuo started on any of that mopey Ionan Enka he likes-oh, hang on!”
Jinx stopped in her tracks to rummage.
“…gonna need one of these, we’re about to go exo-”
Jinx pulled out her spare enviro-kit and pressed it into Lux’s hands.
“Put on the mask and the little chest harness and I’ll set it up for ya-”
“What – what this…?”
“This’ll give you molecular atmos filtration – it’s really cool, reconstitutes any gases you suck in to breathable elements and punts out anything it can’t – and a supra-dermal vibrational exobarrier to keep all the nasty radiation and atmospheric pressure changes from fryin’ ya or poppin’ ya like the galaxy’s prettiest zit…”
“Excuse me!” said Lux, smiling in bafflement, as she fumbled with the mask, really little more than a thin frame around her jaw that buzzed into a translucent barrier field around her nose and mouth, “I am not zit!”
“Duly noted!” said Jinx, “Well I guess the Demaxians terraformed this rock before they built this place, cuz otherwise – haha with the breaches in these walls you’d be dead like fifty hundred times before we even got to you – but it don’t hurt to have one of these on if we’re goin’ outside, just in case, y’know?”
Those breaches…I know my weapons. Photann blasts, plasma or arc-fire explosives wouldn’t be that clean. Those were laser cuts. Concentrated light…
Jinx pondered it on it as she slipped close, slid the straps over Lux’s arms and clipped them about her chest. Her hands fumbled slightly, and she inwardly cursed – what, it’s not like she’d never tugged on someone else’s straps before, but Lux was wearing so little, Jinx’s human hand and the sensors on her prosthetic could both feel the heat radiating from her skin.
She had more muscle on her than she’d initially seemed to, too, and that, too, caught Jinx’s breath in a way she hadn’t quite expected.
The exobarrier crackled as it spread over her body, nearly-invisible vibrations coating her an inch or so above her skin. A strange sensation, one that made Lux giggle; evidently, not one she was used to.
Jinx fought a tiny spike of rage. The Demaxians, it seemed, had never taken her anywhere she’d need one.
“Comfy?”
Lux nodded. Her eyes lingered on Jinx’s own before they snapped out to the vista beyond the facility. Yasuo, Sona and Malphite were already crossing the field to their landing site.
“…outside,” Lux whispered, her voice tremulous.
Jinx opened the protective panel on the enviro-kit’s controls and set the default program, trying to ignore that she could feel the quickening of Lux’s heart and breathing as she gazed, for what might even be the first time, on the world beyond her facility…
“It’s…so beautiful,” said Lux, tears running down her cheeks that shimmered in the light of Exis VI’s watery star, “So beautiful…”
Jinx looked out over the jagged basalt mountains, the lifeless desert, and blasted rocks.
And the colorful hulk of the Morning Star, a splash of vivid yellow amid the dull.
“Oh, Starbeam,” she smiled, stepping across that threshold into the world outside, just ahead of Lux, and thrusting a hand back to her in offer, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
Lux’s eyes turned to hers, reflecting all the stars of the galaxy.
Without hesitation, she reached out and took Jinx’s hand.
“Just you wait,” said Jinx, fingers twining with Lux’s own, her own heartbeat picking up thunka dunka in her chest, “You’re with the Morning Star now! We’ll show you the whole big wide univ-”
She heard it a heartbeat too late; the familiar rippling crackle, like a cosmic thunderclap, of a ship leaving slipspace.
A big one.
Jinx threw her arms around Lux and pulled her down into the cover of the facility’s blown off blast door…
And heard the familiar whine of a Demaxian destructor cannon.
“Oh no no no-”
The Morning Star vanished in a bloom of golden fire and a gigantic blinding cloud of dust and debris.
“Direct hit, sir,” said the chief weapons officer from his station, “Target destroyed.”
Kayn took a deep, satisfied breath. Reveling in the moment.
After all these months of chasing and dodging, narrow escapes and close shaves, the Morning Star had just been sitting there like a brightly colored seabird nesting on the colorless mesas of Exis VI. The backworlds imbeciles hadn’t even had a cloaker.
“Sir…”
“Mm,” Kayn lifted a finger, eyes still closed.
He released his held breath in a slow, trembling sigh, and smiled.
The weapons officer, wide-eyed and breath held, released his own when Kayn turned to look at him expectantly.
“…sir the enemy crew were not aboard, there may be survivors-”
“By intention,” said Kayn, “Now we hunt down the little rats and herd them into our cage. They have nowhere to run.”
A hit on their vessel, of course, was a risk. Cornered, they might flee back into the facility and batten in for some costly, dreary last stand. With the hope of escape, they might be lured into exposing themselves…
Kayn had considered leaving it there, but the opportunity really was too good.
Besides, he was good at hunting rats in the dark…
“Deploy as directed,” he said, turning from the bridge – and its display of the massive debris cloud still unfolding over the impact site like a burning flower, sluggish in the low gravity of the planetoid – and gesturing to the squad of heavily-armored slingtroopers behind him, “With me, gentlemen.”
“Sir!”
Shieda Kayn walked before the towering troopers, a lithe figure in black. He knew the soldiers held him in awe. He would enter battle with no armor, not even a sidearm, no weapon but the scythe at his back.
He needed no other.
“We will have them this time,” he smirked, but as he walked onward, his lip twitched.
Rhaast was silent.
Jinx felt her whole world echo with concussive force as she flung herself down, her arms sheltering a shaking Lux. The shockwave rolled over their position, chunks of rock raining down on the giant door beneath which they cowered.
“…that ain’t good!” Jinx whimpered, barely hearing her own voice over the keening tinnitus.
…she couldn’t see Yasuo, Malphite or Sona…they’d been crossing the field toward – their ship…
She could see the grey and gold hulk of a Demaxian warship floating into orbit like a sword shaped moon.
Dropships flaked from the monster vessel’s belly. Half a dozen Raptor fighters protecting a personnel deployment craft, and beside it a small DEMAX-3 Superiority interceptor…
A familiar one.
“Great,” muttered a voice, just behind her, “It’s your boyfriend.”
Jinx yelped and twisted, Zappy ready to shoot – her hand swatted aside by Yasuo, finger to his lips, his massive white ponytail coated in dust.
Jinx scowled at him, “Look come on, I just said he was hot-”
“-who?” asked Lux, with a sharp narrowing of her eyes.
“Nobody klaggin’ important!” Jinx snapped, pointing her finger at the black cloud enveloping the space where they’d left their ship, their home, their everything – “Not after that!”
“I beg to differ,” said Yasuo, fingers creaking on the hilt of his sword.
“Malphite, Sona…?” Lux breathed out.
Yasuo gave her a dark glance. “They’re tougher than they look.”
He chanced a look over their cover; Jinx herself couldn’t resist a peek, and Lux followed suit, both poking their heads up like bright ginger and rainbow meerkats behind Yasuo’s shoulder. His shoulder lizard hopped onto Jinx’s mohawk for a better vantage point.
Beyond them, the Demaxian fighters angled their nacelles for landing like the wings of the long-extinct raptors they’d been named for, tearing spiral holes in the dust-clouds washing past them from their explosion.
The troop transport came in second-to-last, its bulky flanks lit up by descent lights in eerie blue painting the surrounding rocks. It dropped landing gear and split open port to starboard. Heavily-armored Demaxian sling-troopers rained from the openings. Their heavy boots thudded into the dusty soil. They started marching like grey-and-gold beetles into their sweep recon formation.
Thunder rumbled in the gathering clouds above them.
The interceptor landed last, circling one last time before it came in, as though surveying its handiwork with relish before the descent. The landing gear lowered, then the ramp.
“Crew of the Morning Star…” a voice boomed out over the whirling winds and thrumming engines, amplified by the acoustics of the canyon and its owner’s comms projector, “…until recently, of no fixed address…”
A slender figure in a long black Ordinal’s coat, his scythe slung over one shoulder, strolled down the ramp and out into the canyon, arrogantly in the open.
“…the Demaxian Empire would like to address your tragic loss of home and property with a charitable offer. Come accept our hospitality. We have plenty of room.”
Yasuo drew in a slow, measured breath and ducked back down, pulling his companions with him. He turned to Lux, leveling his gaze at her.
“That’s Ordinal Kayn. Bad guy, do you understand?”
“I understand,” Lux said, her eyes still slivered, her lips pursed. “Jinx boyfriend.”
She shot a fiery stare at Jinx, who made a small choking sound in the back of her throat, glared at Yasuo, and punched him in the shoulder to little effect except to be snapped at in return by his lizard.
“Okay, good,” said Yasuo, “We’ve got that clear. And that’s a whole lot of Demaxholes with him, and each of those guys is wearing military exoarmor and packing a photann pulse rifle and a coated titanium vibrosword-”
“You could of course make an attempt to fight your way to freedom, but of course – hopelessly outnumbered and without means of transport, that would be a nobly doomed endeavor. A last stand, if you will…”
Kayn had by this point strode out into the open, his arms spread, his gaze sweeping about the canyon as his troops moved to flank him. Two squads guarding him, but there were at least three more, fanning out to cover the narrow path around the Morning Star’s former landing site and the entrances of the ruined facility.
Jinx gritted her teeth and growled.
Yasuo paused a moment before continuing, “So here’s the plan, we need to move stealthy, and we need to move fast-”
“And of course, Captain Yasuo, you and I both know that nobility and sacrifice are not in your scoundrel nature. So, let’s not kid ourselves and waste each other’s time. Come out and give us the Templar, and arrangements might just be made for your continued survival…I promise.”
Yasuo’s eyes narrowed ever-so-slightly, but he kept his even tone and his eyes on Lux’s face as he spoke softly.
“…Lux, what I want you to do is stick close to Jinx, follow the canyon wall and keep within the smoke, your breathers should protect you and the particles will mess with their sensors. I’ll find Malphite and Sona. Once you’ve reached the landing site, I want you to follow Jinx’s lead and-”
Yasuo and Lux both jumped as a sudden flash of heat and smoke washed over them both, ducking back from the rocket whooshing over their heads -
“HOW ABOUT YOU SHOVE IT UP YOUR KLAGGIN’ PORKHOLE AND GO CRY UNDER YER WOOBIE BLANKET!” Jinx hollered into the smoke, already running to the next rock formation with her massive orange braid trailing her like a dragon’s tail -
The Demaxian squadrons spread out immediately, returning photann fire in pulsing bursts –
All but the unit to Kayn’s left, who were too busy screaming as the Ordinal’s scythe flashed and deflected Jinx’s rocket away from his face, exploding it right in their midst.
Armored bodies, and pieces of armored bodies, rained like broken action figures.
Jinx cackled, her minigun spraying flashes of blue tracer fire through the smoke as she ran, cutting down another two troopers who unwisely moved from cover, “-YA GORGEOUS FLIPPY HAIRED SPACE EMO!”
“Oh, she’s still flirting,” Kayn’s chuckle echoed through the smoke, “Kill her.”
Amid the growing storm of smoke and dust, slingtroopers peppered the canyon with volleys of photann fire, vaporizing smaller rocks and ricocheting from the larger basalt pillars, threaded through as they were with iron and titanium deposits.
Yasuo pulled Lux behind theirs and held up a finger, “New plan. Jinx provides a distraction; we go get our crew. Good?”
Contact. Check corners. Check targets. Move quick and decisive, cover to cover.
Lux’s heart pounded in her ears. The smoke, the noise, the smells, the textures, all bombarded her like nothing in her training, but everything – everything – triggered some implanted memory in her brain, her spine, her muscles, like a key sliding in a lock –
“Good,” Lux rasped, her throat dry.
Her eyes were on the sporadic flashes of Jinx’s wild gunfire flaring in the murk.
Yasuo nodded, and they moved. They kept low, darting from rock formation to rock formation. Yasuo held Lux back and timed their movements with their Demaxian-standard pauses in burst fire.
The Demaxian empire had many strengths. Predictability was not one of them.
But Yasuo’s calculations weren’t perfect. On the third run, a volley of photann shots spat at them from the smoke as they crested the space between two basalt pillars.
Yasuo sprang to cover Lux. His sword flashed to deflect each blast. Lux ducked away from danger –
A Demaxian trooper loomed around the next rock, all blank visored helm and hawk-patterned pauldrons. His wide humming vibrosword swung toward Lux’s face from above.
Ambush!
Yasuo was suddenly between them, his sword a living whirlwind, splitting the soldier’s weapon and then his armor from shoulder to hip.
The Demaxian fell face forward into the dirt. The squadmate behind him swore and stepped over him, locking swords with Yasuo and shoving him back against the basalt pillar.
Another, wielding a titanium glaive, came running out of the smoke behind Lux, pincering them. He rushed Lux, glaive first.
Lux felt the lock click inside her mind, and the tumblers slid free.
Yasuo saw the third trooper out of the corner of his eye.
He dodged a gauntled punch, angled his sword to slide from the Demaxian vibrosword and tipped his opponent’s overbalanced stance forward to pull him into the pillar and leave him wide open to be cut down.
Not soon enough. The glaive trooper was right on top of Lux, an armored hulk dwarfing her small, nearly-naked figure.
Yasuo broke the sword-lock and slashed through the foe before him, pulsing energy through his sword to cleave armor, muscle and bone through to air, too late-
The glaive thrust toward Lux’s heart…
…and Lux twisted and slid past it in a whirl of luminous hair. She darted in close, quicker under his guard than the armored man could react. She snatched the vibro-dagger from his belt and drove it into the seam of the armor at his inner elbow, shearing through the resistant material.
Blood splashed. The soldier screamed. His fingers slipped from the haft of his glaive, and it fell into Lux’s waiting grip. She flowed behind her assailant with the grace of a hunting fox; a swift crack drove the weapon’s shock pulse tip into the back of the Demaxian’s knee, then twisted to sweep his weakened legs out from under him with the back of the blade.
He toppled like a metal tower; the girl pounced on him, stabbing her fingers into the panel concealed behind his helmet’s left temple.
With a hiss of steam, the Demaxian power armor retracted and split open, and the visor slid away, revealing a startled, scarred face.
Lux drove the glaive down…
…splintering the blade through the armor’s controls and embedding it beside the soldier’s head, six inches into stone.
Threads of shimmering Ora pulsed from Lux’s fingers, down the length of the haft, shattered it free of what remained of the head of the weapon, and coalesced into delicate, interwoven loops in its place, like the petals of a flower made of light.
“Don’t get up,” she said.
The downed man stared at the glowing waif above him and nodded frantically.
She stepped back from him, strapped on the soldier’s dagger belt, and sheathed the knife there. She lifted her radiant new weapon and nodded to Yasuo.
He arched an eyebrow.
“Neat,” he said, jabbing a thumb in the direction they’d been moving, “Shall we?”
“Go,” she said, “Yes.”
Yasuo did not comment on the tremors in her hands on the staff, nor the icy blank of her eyes.
Kayn strode through no-man’s land, the fighters of the Vigilis Brigade running low and fast ahead of him, still exchanging photann rifle bursts with the insane swarm of phosphorescent tracer rounds spluttering out of from behind cover – from on top of that rock – from behind that pillar…
A thrum of dark whispers in the back of his skull told him his silent partner was no longer sulking; just in time to lean with inhuman grace from tracer fire spitting past his face.
“Good of you to finally decide to join us, Rhaast.”
~ ͏You͠’r͞e ̧bơrin̡g̕ ̵me̢. Too҉ ͞m͡uch̴ d͘od̴g̀i͘ng͡,̴ n̶ot͜ ͞enou҉gh ̷kill̕i͝ng ҉~
“Sir!” shouted a soldier to his flank, “You should move to cover, there’s got to be five or ten shooters moving around with that rate of fire-”
“It’s just the one girl,” Kayn said, a flick of his scythe pinging a stray volley out of the soldier’s path so that he could at least could continue his conversation without his subordinate being shot mid-sentence, “Encircle and pin her in, but watch for tricks.”
“Tricks, sir?” asked the Vigilis trooper.
A trio of slingtroopers came sprinting from behind one of the rocks, frantically trying to bat away chattering mechanical devices clamped onto their armor – too late. The objects detonated in brightly colored blasts of chemical fire and smoke, hurling the unfortunate troopers ragdoll into the rocks.
“AWW, YOU GUYS AREN’T HUGGERS?” Jinx’s voice bounced around the canyon walls, her silhouette briefly visible amid gunfire flashes atop one of the fallen pillars before she bounded behind it in a snaky whip of braid and cord, “MY LITTLE BUDDIES SURE ARE!”
Kayn smiled thinly and gestured the troopers forward with a flick of two fingers before he split off from them, alone, fading into the smoke.
~͏ ͘S̀he͏ ̨s͞ee͏m͏s ́t̨o̵ be̕ ͞a͢ ͝li͏t̵t͠le d͟isgru͏ntled͘ wįt̛h͟ y̡óu̶ ͞thi͏s̷ t̵i͘m͘e, K̴a̡yn̛.͟ ̴Or ̨do ̵you thìn͘k ̶h͡e̶r͜ ͢ag̷gres͝s̛ío͏n̕ is̕ a̵n̸ e͏xp̕ressio͠n̛ ͝of ar͝o͡usa͘l̢? ̛~͢
“Are you asking about her, or yourself?” Kayn muttered as he reached into the shadowy wellspring of Rhaast’s power; his molecular structure shifted between streams of dimensionality, his body slipping into a spectral blue outline, melting into the rocks of the canyon…
Hunting.
“C’MON, WHAT ARE YOU GUYS WAITIN’ FOR, I HAVE SOOO MANY BULLETS LEFT, RIGHT HERE, BEHIND THIS ROCK-”
Kayn narrowed his eyes, slithering through the solid terrain as though it were water, closing in on the voice –
~ Com͝e̸ ̨n̵ow̸. Obviou͜s t͜r͞ap͢ ̨~
“It is, but I want to see if our grunts are stupid enough to –”
Kayn’s vision emerged from the stone just in time to see the lead Vigilis signal to move in, flanking a towering, narrow monolith to get a clear eyeline to shoot.
Behind the tall rock stood Jinx; or a flickering, partially translucent hologram of Jinx, jumping up with her hands to her mouth in an exaggerated ‘oops!’ expression before waving goodbye and blipping out of existence.
As its hologram flicked off, the Chomper in the shape of Malphite’s head embedded in a fault line in the rock whined and rattled.
Kayn sighed as it blew, toppling the monolith onto the heads of five of the Empire’s elite as they scrambled in vain to get out of the way.
~ ҉I d̕on’t̸ ̸know wh̕y͏ ̶y͢ou̶’r͝e̷ al̢wa͟y͜s̛ ̕s̡o ́di̡s̷a̧p͝p̡oint͝ed ~ Rhaast sneered at him.
“Things will be different when I am Emperor,” Kayn muttered.
~ I’m͜ ͘s̕u̶re͏ ~͜
A quieter snicker caught his attention, and the slither of a bright orange braid into the smoke.
Kayn smiled.
“There you are.”
He slid back into the basalt walls and swam through them until he saw her, tucked into a corner of the basalt labyrinth, bent over her contraptions, tongue poking between her teeth, oblivious to the shadow in the stone at her back…
She stood up straight to admire her handiwork.
Pity, thought Kayn as he slipped soundlessly behind her and raised Rhaast, she was cute.
Jinx bit her lip as she lay the tripwire in her wake, bolting it into the cliffside opposite her spot.
“...hum de dum settin’ the charge kaboomy-boomy-boo...”
Jinx straightened and cracked her back a little, suddenly alerted to the thud thud thud of mighty and familiar footsteps through the smoke…
And a prickle at the back of her neck.
“Oh klagg – Malphite, buddy-”
Jinx frantically waved her hands as he came barreling out of the smoke, his face armor fully engaged and his vents trailing fire…
“-woah-woah-stop-tripwire!”
Malphite ploughed right through the wire and straight into the semi spectral figure looming behind Jinx with his scythe raised…
Both figures crashed into the basalt behind them just as the Chomper blew.
Then all Jinx saw was blue fire and all she heard was the screaming of her ears.
“Keep moving. We’re almost there.”
Lux gritted her teeth, ducking around another cluster of basalt pillars. Ahead was a wall of smoke, the remains of the explosion of the bright pretty ship, now escalating into a storm of dust and ash that whipped her pale hair and borrowed robe about her bare flesh like agitated snakes.
“Almost where?” Lux hissed at Yasuo as he forged on blindly, toward the heart of the cloud, “Ship gone. Where else we g-”
Lux felt the thunder of the explosion as much as she heard it. Her heart ticked up a tempo, and all she could think was Jinx Jinx Jinx Jinx as she exchanged her glance with Yasuo and zig-zagged their trajectory across the battlefield.
The staff in her hands thrummed with power. Her power, no longer summoned on the command of hollow-eyed lab coats, no longer monitored and measured and controlled…
Oh, she could feel it there, leading back from the staff into her skin, into her veins and bones, into her heart, and deeper…
Into places within herself she could not yet see.
Living. Hungering. Awake.
Now, when blaster shots pulsed into their path from the Demaxian troops, it was not only Yasuo’s dancing plasma blade but her whirling staff of light that spun to deflect them harmlessly into the rocks.
She – and he – were smudged with dirt and blood, scorched by strafing shots, but no direct hits from those mighty Imperial weapons; guns that would shatter bones and liquify organs on a direct hit.
They’d been skilled, smart, sticking to cover, avoiding direct contact with the enemy wherever possible, taking down the few isolated foes who confronted them, but Lux knew the odds were against them. Her brain flashed with programmed information combat formations encirclement tactics specs of Demaxian ordnance and armor. Their tiny group couldn’t fight these soldiers for long. Outnumbered. Outgunned. Cornered.
They’d been lucky, and without the ship, it was only a matter of time before their luck ran out.
Lux did not know why this explosion felt so different. Why it summoned the image of Jinx’s face, bloodied and cold, all the wild life stolen from her eyes.
But she ran anyway, toward darkness.
~ ͏Wh͘at w̵as̨ ͠t͡h͟a͝t̶ a̕b̶ǫu͝t͜ your̡ ‘g͝r҉u͏n͡ts’͟ ̧anḑ ̶w̡a̸l̷ki̧n̶g ̴i͟n̨t̨o ̡trap͠s͝?̨ ~, the voice sneered in his skull, its derision slicing like its blade, ~ ͜G̡et ́up̧,̸ ͞idi̧o̕t! ̕~
Kayn shook his head and grunted as he pawed across the dusty canyon floor until his fingers found the familiar handle of Rhaast. His ears rang with a long keening tone. He only wished it could blot out Rhaast.
His eyes flicked open and narrowed in rage.
Malphite lay nearby, a mountain brought low, his leathery blue hide still smoking under the shattered remains of his blast shields, but Kayn saw his huge chest rise and fall. He was already stirring.
~̴ ̨Oh, i͜t͘’s th͏e fles̶h̛y͘ on͘e̸.͘ ͜Shal̸l͜ we ̵c̕ar͠ve͏ the͢ ̕ţu͞rk̸ey͟ whil̀st ̴h̨e͝’s̸ ͜pl̛u͝c͞k͡ed and͡ t͝ru͘sse͞d͟?̢ ~̡
Rhaast’s bloodlust hummed in his grip, but Kayn only gritted his teeth and growled.
“Where’s the girl…”
~ ͏Where i̧s th̶e̛ T͟e̸mpla̸r͝, K̕ay͏n͝?̨ Th͝at̸ ́is a ͜q̧ueştio̴n҉ ͘y̨ǫu͜ ̨s̴h͠o̶uld҉ be͠ ҉a̡sking͜. ~
Kayn shoved himself up to his feet, drawing the scythe after him with a slither of metal on stone. He tapped his temple, his eyepiece humming into life.
Malphite flickered immediately into sight, a hulking outline in orange lying over by the wreckage of the canyon wall – and there, there was Jinx, sprawled with her prosthetic arm twisted underneath her, partly visible behind one of the basalt rocks.
“Question?”
~̶ ́Not t́h̛e ́ón̴ly͢ o͡n͢e you should ask yourself…~̛
“Do tell,” Kayn smirked, turned, and swung Rhaast to cut the downed giant’s throat –
The golden light – the golden sound – washed over him like a tidal wave, threads of it branching off to knock Rhaast’s blade away inches from Malphite’s skin, others slashing into Kayn’s coat, drawing blood from his shoulders and chest before he swatted the killing wave aside with a whirl of the scythe and clove the energy down the middle.
The alien notes of the Templar’s song trilled a moment before the golden flare of Ora lit up the dust cloud – a wall of it rising above the gilded pinpoints of Sona’s eyes, smoldering in the smoke.
“Finally,” Kayn, posed with the scythe thrust downward and his hair hiding his eye, whispered with malicious glee.
Sona surged out of the cloud like a slender wraith, her diaphanous robes pitted with burn marks from photann shots and her pretty face hard with righteous fury. If she spoke, he imagined she might be screaming sacred oaths, but the only sounds were the symphony of tonal hums and pulses as each of her attacks flashed out at him.
A torrential barrage of the Templar’s Ora against his own, channeled through Rhaast’s slicing, wheeling blade as he danced in counterpoint to Sona’s relentless assault.
She was strong, getting stronger each time they clashed.
If she weren’t such a pitiful scion of that tiresome faith, he might even have admired her.
~ ͡S̨t͠op͞ ̨p̛laying,̨ K͢a͢y̸n. ͏En͡d͜ ͘th͠ís ̵foolįşh ͠dance̛. T҉ak̸e h̷er ͜no҉w̢!̢ ͝~͞
Malphite gave a bellowing groan and pushed himself up to his feet; the brute was bleeding bright blue blood from numerous wounds, and some of them did not look superficial.
But once glance at Jinx’s crumpled form and his back spines flared, his hoary beard bristled, and he beat his chest like an enraged Ixtalis rock gorilla before lunging after Kayn, joining Sona’s volleys with thunderous punches of his own.
Kayn laughed into the onslaught, the sheer thrill of testing his skill against the big oaf’s stone-cracking strength and the moon witch’s Ora-charged sonic waves simultaneously – and the moments they almost, almost broke his guard – burning joyously in his blood.
“Oh, have I made you angry?” he taunted, Rhaast slashing a vivid azure line across Malphite’s collar, a twist and thrust of his hand repelling Sona’s latest rippling blast to smash her away from her floating soundboard and into the rocky wall behind her – “It’s a pity you’re all about to die-”
Kayn’s body blurred away from a hammer-fisted swing of Malphite’s, crashing down to shatter the earth just where he had stood in a plume of liquifying stone.
“-you’re finally almost putting up a decent fight!”
~ ̶Ka̡y͠n͡! ͏E͞no̡u͡gh!̡ ͜Kill͜ the ̶f̨ĺe҉s̀h̶y̨ ̧òne an̴d͞ ̶t̨ak̀e t͘h̸e T́emplár a̛l̸i̷ve͏! We l͝e͡a̕ve͠ n͢ow!͝ ́~҉ ̸
“What’s this, Rhaast?” Kayn chuckled, “Turning from the slaughter?”
Movement from the corner of his eye; he heard the shout of “Hasagi!” slash through the growing dust storm, a thin flash of blue plasma stinging his shoulder a moment before a whirlwind of the same ripped him from his feet and hurled him backwards…
Kayn skidded, his boots sliding on the rocks, catching himself in a half-crouch as he braced.
“Oh, good,” he said, lifting his eyes back to the figures in the smoke, “The gang’s all here.”
Kayn whipped Rhaast behind him and up into a guarding stance. Captain Yasuo, grim-faced, strode toward him out of the haze, flicking his blade up to strike first –
~͏ ̢D͟o͞ ҉not ̶p͢la̶y̕ ̡t͜h͢i̢s͏ game̴, ̶K̶ay̷n!͏ ̢~͟
“Don’t tell me you’re afraid –” Kayn grinned, “-of a pathetic drunk with an off-the-shelf blade-” Kayn lunged to meet Yasuo’s downward swing, shoving him back with a furious tempest of scythe-slashes, “-who thinks himself a swordsman?”
~̛ Ńo! ~ rumbled Rhaast, no longer mocking, a hint of … panic?... under his demonic growl; ~ ̶Not h͞i̕m̶. ~͏
Kayn narrowed his eyes, deflecting another searing lash of plasma from Yasuo, dodging a spinning blade hurled from the earth by Malphite, a wheel-kick driving it to slice a surge of Ora-laced sonic energy from the Templar…
“…who-”
All of his senses sprung into alert, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up; Kayn lashed a spectral wave of force from Rhaast to deter his foes and wove away, sliding ghostly through the stones to a new vantage point – the edge of the blasted crater the Domination had made of the Morning Star…
Funny, he thought, taking note of the melted bowl of stone and glass, there should be more wreckage…
…then from the corner of his eye he saw the tiny silhouette of her.
A young woman, pale as a ghost, her long hair a luminous gradient from platinum to a shimmering rainbow at the tips. She was nearly naked, wearing only the Templar’s hooded outer robe and a Demaxian soldier’s belt tying it off at her waist in some semblance of modesty. Yet…
Ora. She blazed with it, like she bore the heart of a hundred suns just under her skin, where no-one else could see.
More than the Templar, more even than Kayn himself, for all he had absorbed, somehow she had more…
“…impossible,” he murmured in fascination and a bitter stab of envy.
The girl didn’t even look at him. Her eyes, huge and shimmering with their own glow, fixed in a blank stare at Jinx, lying sprawled and boneless like someone’s cast off dolly.
Her shoulders and chest heaved under the robe with fierce, animal breaths.
“…jinx,” she whispered, “Jinx…”
“No,” Yasuo shouted, fanning out to flank Kayn and protect the girl, as his friends picked up Jinx and started to move away, “Get away from him, Lux!”
“…Rhaast,” Kayn murmured absently, “Who the klag is that?”
Kayn had long grown accustomed to Rhaast’s emotions crawling in the back of his thoughts; spite, bloodlust, cruelty, mockery, dominance.
He had never, for a moment, thought to feel what he felt from it now.
~ ̴R̵uń,̛ Kayn̸ ~ ̀the scythe warned, ~͠ ̨R͞ùn ̛n̶o͡w͏! ̷~̴
It was too late. The girl looked right at him.
“No,” she said.
A broken staff, glowing with looping threads of Ora, rose above her hand and twirled in a wheel.
The sun rose in his face.
Jinx stirred to movement, jostling motion, pain, and the familiar smell of burnt copper, scorched plasma, and Malphite’s oddly ozone-scented sweat. Just as familiar was the big guy’s shoulder, over which she dangled, her arm twisted oddly.
“H-hey, big guy,” she groaned, “Am I dead …?”
“Not yet,” Malphite growled, but there was a wet wheeze under it. Jinx smelled his blood, too, lots of it, and that sent a cold shiver down her spine.
“You?”
“Not yet,” he grumbled with a pained grin, stumbling back toward Sona, who had flung a defensive Ora barrier up over all of them.
::: Jinx, it is ready. We must go! :::
“Yasuo,” Jinx muttered, “…Lux…”
Beyond the throb of her head, through the haze of smoke, she sighted that pretty bastard, Kayn, squaring off with Yasuo, just on the edge of the still-warm slag crater that marked the Morning Star’s landing site…
And between them stood Lux.
“Luxie…” Jinx croaked.
Lux had her eyes fixed on Kayn. A look rose into them Jinx had never seen on anyone’s face.
And then she was light.
It started as a golden Ora glow blazing in her eyes, threading through her veins like snaking bolts of lightning through a stormy sky, igniting every iridescent hue of her hair into a floating serpentine rainbow rising at her back.
Her small feet left the earth. Her hands rose before her, a staff spinning between them, the head a flower-shaped golden lamp glowing bright as a flarebug, blurring into a ring of celestial radiance.
A thin laser-line snapped through Ordinal Kayn. For a split instant Jinx thought she saw blue-white motes joined by white threads, interconnecting constellations glinting about the beam core…
It flickered, flashed, and then blared into a blinding torrent of light.
Shrieking, scythe flung up before him, Kayn disappeared entirely into the white light like a fleck of seafoam fallen into a bonfire…
…the beam cut through the dust storm, through the basalt formations of the canyon, through a screaming squad of Demaxian slingtroopers, through their dropship…
It sliced the starboard nacelle clean off the Demaxian fleet warship hovering in low orbit above the battlefield and kept going into the starlit void.
The light reflected in Jinx’s eyes in the fire of a thousand stars.
It was the moment she fell in love.
Sona lowered her arms from her face, staring in awe at the pale girl before her.
Lux still floated, her body afire with that Light, faint rainbow spears of it still raying from points upon her skin, which glittered like a field of celestial diamonds. Her long hair pulsed with colors bleeding brighter into white and gold…
The Ora. All that had been within the Divine One, all of its timeless wisdom and sacred life, passed into this body, reforged as cosmic Light, beyond anything I could have ever imagined…
…or is there something…else?
Lux breathed in slowly, like a child drawing the first air into its lungs.
Is she…something else?
Sona caught her own breath as Lux’s staff slowed its twirl before her, and the light of her body ebbed gradually, then flickered and went out.
The girl’s eyelids fluttered. She fell like a shot bird from a branch.
Sona flew forward, webbing her hands with threads of golden Ora, shooting it out in a humming field to slow her descent.
Yasuo, blinking away the lingering blindness, darted forward, hopping the uneven rocks with a ronin’s grace before his arms snaked around Lux and caught her.
“That was…quite the show, kiddo,” he mumbled, throat dry, “But uh, time to exit the stage.”
Sona, flowing closer, touched his un-lizarded shoulder and nodded. Yasuo whistled to catch Malphite’s attention and tipped his head to Jinx.
“Jinx, you good to get our sore asses out of here?”
She didn’t look it. Her face was bruised and smudged with burns, a trickle of blood running down from her scalp, and her prosthetic arm was twisted like a piece of junk metal.
“Oh yeah, boss,” she whispered, her eyes fixed on the girl in Yasuo’s arms, “So much better’n good.”
Malphite grunted and flinched as a glancing shot from a Demaxian trooper scorched one of his back-vents. They were regrouping, surging toward their position, photann shots lancing through the smoke toward their team.
“Cool,” said Yasuo, “Let’s blow this slaghole.”
Darkness.
Swallowing everything.
Motes of celestial debris. Tiny fragments of a shattered universe.
Drifting down, down, into that bottomless, ever-hungry Light…
~͞ K̕ày̶n̨ ̕~
No. No Kayn. Only scattered atoms, only the ruined wreckage of a soul, cast adrift in agony upon the pitiless stars to linger like an echoing scream in the void for all eternity…
͞~ Ka͟aaayn ͞~̛
…nestled only in the bottomless arms of oblivion, no comfort, no solace, only the miserable embrace of –
~ K̀AY̴N̛! ~
Brows furrowed. Oh, good, he still had brows. There was flesh…? Arguably.
Oblivion, blessed oblivion, fled him. He still existed, somehow, but existence was pain.
~͜ Sto͘p …wa͟ļl̵owing.̶ We ̸néed…͘ ͠to ̧m͢ǫve. ͘~̛
Everything hurt. His skin was made of fire. His bones were crushed coal. His body full of steaming organ soup.
Lips. He had them. Cracked and painful. He licked them and croaked; words! He could words.
“W…what….the flaming klagg was that…”
~ ̀N̨o̧thi̢n̕g̀ ͞…͝you͝r͘ ͞iņf̡i͟ni͞te͜s̷imàl̶ ̴a̡b̕ort͝ion̴ o̵f͡ a͞ ̡mi̕nd… ca͟n͠ co̢mp͜re͡ḩe͝nd̵. S̛o͝ ̕st̡op …͡w͜h̨ìnin͢g̵…. a͢nd̢ ̸get̨…́g͝e͠t̴ up̢!̢ ~
Rhaast didn’t sound right either. Kayn squeezed an eye open to see the Scythe, still death-gripped in his own scorched hand.
Its pristine, sleek modern lines – the form it had taken for Kayn – were cracked and broken. Scarred, molten-rock flesh oozed between the fissures, glowing with a hellish light. The wobbling orb of Ora at its heart split open into a crimson eye, glaring accusingly at him.
“You…took the hit,” Kayn rasped out a chuckle, “You… saved me?”
~͟ ͢No̶t͢ ͞o̴ut͡ ́o̵f c͟ha̕rity͝ ̀~̸
“Rhaast…you…like me?”
~ ͏If͟ ̛I͝ ̶a̵c͡q̴ui̢esc̡é t͘o͢ y͘ou̵r ͢m̵au̡dl҉in҉ fant͘a͏śi͞es wi҉ll̡ yo͡u̢ ge̶t̀ ͜u̢p? ͜They a͟ŗe esća͡p̷i͡ng̸ u҉s! ̷~
Kayn reached for the Ora within him – and found bare flickers –
Gone. All of it. Accumulated over months, greedily plundered and infused into his flesh to increase his power, everything he had done, burned away in a snap of light…
Despair surged within Kayn.
But so did rage.
His fingers tightened around Rhaast and he pushed himself against the walls of his scorching agony to rise like a blackened phoenix from the edge of surrender.
“They can’t escape,” he sneered, “They have no ship.”
͡~ L̨ook ag͡ai̵n̡ ~͠
Kayn scowled and shook his head. His eyepiece was ruined, but he did not need enhancements to see that the Morning Star had been obliter-
- Kayn stopped and stared.
The girl’s massive beam had sliced through the magnetic storm, dragging its charged particles with the sheer force it had shorn through them. A perfect cylindrical line had been cut through the slag of the valley – and through the Demaxians’ forces –
But none of that mattered, because it had cleared the smoke around the Morning Star’s landing site and –
And standing like a bright yellow tin can in the dying light, the – the –
The Morning Star was still there!
͡~ I͝ to̢ld̀ y͞o͜u͝ ͏to͢ ͘q͝ue̷stion!̢ ͠~
“…why there was no debris,” Kayn snarled, snatching up a lump of rock and hurling it through the phantom image of the ship.
It flickered, pixelated, and Kayn followed the thin half-visible rays of holographic light back to…
A long, suspiciously rectangular block of basalt nestled a few hundred meters away in the back of the canyon.
A shipwide displacer holo!?
He spotted the white foxtail of Yasuo’s hair and the big blue chunk of Malphite scrambling up a rickety ramp dropping down from the “rock”.
Kayn started running, screaming out his rage into the limping agony of every step.
“Damn you damn you damn you!” The sheer cheapness of the trick slapped Kayn in the face as hard as one of Malphite’s fists. No one used that kind of hokey tech – what kind of backworlds morons didn’t have a proper cloaker –
~̢ ̕K͠AY͠N̷! ~͡
“All units!” Kayn shrieked into his fried comms, receiving only squeals of static, “Destroy the Morning Star! Destroy them!”
No answering fire came from the Domination, still reeling in the high atmosphere above them with pieces of its nacelle slowly burning up as they fell.
At least a few of his troopers were close enough to open fire, photann blasts slashing at the blocky basalt mass as it shimmered into an identical Morning Star.
The real one.
Kayn swung Rhaast with all his might, pouring every last speck of Ora still stored in his body into one final blow.
Light. Light. LIGHT.
Everything hurt, her heart hurt the most, but it was a good pain, swelling up in her chest, blazing behind her eyes.
All Jinx could think of was light. Light. LIGHT. Light that filled Jinx from her scuffed boots to the Chomper-scorched tip of her mohawk.
Her Light. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever…
“Oh my stars,” Jinx howled with laughter as she flung her battered body into her equally battered pilot’s seat, “Did you see the look on his face?!”
“Focus, Jinx!” Yasuo sang as he took up the captain’s chair, “We’re not out of trouble yet. Malphite?”
“Took some flak from the big boom,” grunted their copilot, “Shields at forty-eight!”
“Damn,” Yasuo muttered, with a glance to Sona, now buckling the still-unconscious Lux into her seat’s safety harness, “We’ll be sitting ducks if that big one gets another shot off…”
Jinx just giggled, leaned in and planted a noisy kiss on the button of her joystick. “Hang in there, baby, this is gonna be a fun one!”
Her arm didn’t feel right. The servos were tight, grinding in her shoulder, metal and carbon scraping together at the crushed wrist, not quite following the orders her connected nerves were giving them.
But she had this.
Gripping the controls, Jinx bit her lip, narrowed her eyes, and fired for takeoff.
Through the cockpit’s viewport, there was Kayn, limping toward them, his pretty face twisted in apoplectic rage.
“Seeya, pretty-boy!” Jinx sang at him over the broadcast as the engines whined, the thrusters fired and the landing gear pulled up. The Morning Star’s nose lifted, dropping Kayn from the viewport –
But not before Jinx watched him haul that weird scythe of his over his shoulder and throw his entire body – and a swirling arc of Ora force – into a cutting blow that rolled out from his position and tore up the landscape in a line toward their ship –
“Ohshit,” said Jinx, “Br-a-a-c-e!”
Sona threw both of her arms up, creased her brow and closed her eyes.
The Morning Star rocked with the force of Kayn’s strike. He had the distinct pleasure of watching it shear through their remaining shields and cleave a sparking gash along the flank of the vessel.
But it was too late. They were moving. Lifting off, thrusters blazing, into the starry sky.
Rhaast’s roar of spiteful frustration scourged Kayn’s thoughts, but he had no time to dither. Twisting on his good leg, he stagger-sprinted back toward the Demaxian landing site, through ranks of his slingtroopers still pulsing photann rifle-fire after the fleeing smuggler ship.
He shoved them out of the way as he stumbled to his interceptor, scrambled up the ramp and slumped into his seat, panting with exertion and pain.
Rhaast clunked from his back, digging into the Superiority’s pristine floor. Kayn’s fingers shook on the controls of his ship. His vision blurred in and out.
But he could still fly.
“All units,” he gasped into the ship’s comm, “Shoot to disable. I want them alive. Do you understand me? I want them to SUFFER!”
The interceptor’s nacelles angled for takeoff. Ground thrusters fired in a wash of blue flame.
Kayn’s thoughts roiled, but one screaming question dominated all of them.
Who.
Who!?
WHO ARE YOU?!
“Not gonna make it!” wheezed Malphite.
It really didn’t look like they would.
The ship was listing badly to port; smoke and flames lashed outside the viewports. Klaxons flared and warning lights screeched HULL BREACH everywhere Jinx looked.
Outside, Demaxian photann shots chewed at their shields, and such was the potency of Imperial weaponry that even their ground troopers could blow a hole in a junk trader like the Morning Star despite all of Jinx’s illegal upgrades.
And that didn’t even factor in the Raptors, which were now firing their nacelles to take off, except for the couple Jinx had nailed with the ship’s forecannons as they made their ascent –
Or the damaged battleship, which seemed to be righting itself and priming up that big Devastator cannon…
“Eh,” Jinx grinned, “Had worse odds.”
A glance behind her showed lines of sweat running down Sona’s usually collected visage. Their Templar had her hands thrust into the Ora drive connector and the golden light of their living fusion-fuel lit the entire command deck, her crew’s sweating faces looking like they’d all been misted with liquid gold.
As she tore her gaze back to what she was doing, Jinx only faintly heard the snick of a security harness releasing behind her.
“Jinx-” Yasuo started.
“Fasten your safety belts and make sure your seats are in the upright and locked position-”
The Morning Star jolted again from direct photann hits. The DEMAX-3 interceptor, Kayn’s ship, was right on their tail, stuck to them like an enraged mosquito.
“Keep us steady, Jinx,” Yasuo shouted, over the pulses of return fire, as he manned the aft gunner console, “Give me a clean shot.”
In answer, she bit her lip and cranked the familiar digital whine of the Slipspace drive charging up.
“Better plan!” said Jinx.
Malphite’s eyes widened, “Jinx no –”
“Jinx yes!” she trilled, pushing the dial further.
The glow around them started to stretch into thin streaks of light.
“We’re breached and not clear of orbit,” Yasuo said, eyes narrowing, “We’ll break up!”
“Yeah we’ll break up faster if that hits us!” Jinx countered, jabbing a finger at the glow from the priming Devastator cannon, slowly angling to aim at them as the massive warship righted its lopsided hovering.
“Oh,” said Malphite, spotting it, “Yeah.”
A hand snaked out, flailing from the passenger seat. Seizing Sona’s shoulder. Light washed over them, two glowing nodes connected by stellar pathways, whirling above them, through them, like a thrown staff spinning end-to-end, passing through the hull structure of the Morning Star and boomeranging back…
Reinforcing Sona’s shield, sealing the breach in a radiant spiderweb of sound and light.
Lux stood, hunched and panting, her face pale as a corpse, but her eyes blazing with determination. She squeezed Sona’s shoulder and met the Templar’s eyes.
“We make it,” Lux said.
“You are both insane!” A voice quacked hastily through Sona’s vocal console.
Jinx glanced back at Sona’s resolute glare, and beside her, Lux’s beautiful face, shining with sweat.
Lux met her eyes, smiled, and nodded to her.
“Sure are!” said Jinx, and the world dissolved around them as she punched the slingdrive.