Page 49 of Jarran

More ships appeared behind it. A second warship, smaller but just as armed. Troop transports. Fast interceptors peeling off in formation.

The Virilian fleet. All of them. Well, most of them.

Virilian soldiers poured into the docking bay through multiple entry points. Big males, armed, who made the Sifter strike team look like amateurs. They swept through the bay, driving the remaining Sifters back toward their shuttle.

Evie pressed against the crate and watched names become faces. Files aside, the Virilians were pretty famous on Earth, as the Virilian match program had been both controversial and a spectacle. Gossip about the gorgeous aliens who were taking human women as mates had all but engulfed news and entertainment broadcasts. She’d watched the streams as much as anyone, and gaped at the males she now saw leaping from the small vessels and attacking the Sifters. In addition to Taron, she spotted Trak, the swaggering warrior prince who’d married a human woman named Anna and reportedly wrote poetry. Drex, his older brother and king of Exir City, who’d made socialite Madison his queen. She sucked in a breath to see Virak, the other Virilian king. He ruled neighboring Tagja City, which was Jarran’s birthplace, and Niir, the one Pella Rin had shot in the chest, who’d survived and married one of the first-generation hybrid females.

They were here. All of them. Five Virilian males whose faces had been plastered all over Earth streams. And they’d brought plenty of backup.

Then she saw the Baylan. Taller than the Virilians, with cool, angular features and no tail, Saar-king Harc walked beside his Virilian allies with an air of command. A few years ago, this guy had been in Earth news a lot. It was the only way she recognized who he was. The Baylan leader gazed around the docking bay like he owned it. He was the only one unarmed, and possibly the most lethal person in there.

A Sifter soldier raised his blaster at Harc from behind a cargo pod.

The blaster ripped itself out of the soldier’s hands and flew across the bay, smashing against the far wall. The soldier stared at his empty hands. Then the cargo pod he’d been crouching behind slid sideways across the floor, exposing him completely.

“Didn’t bring plastoid weapons like you did to Korath-7, did you?” Harc sneered. He flicked his fingers and a support beam groaned and bent inward, pinning two soldiers against a wall. Weapons tore free from holsters and clattered to the ground in a spreading circle around him. A section of hull plating peeled back like tinfoil and wrapped around a Sifter’s arms, pinning them to his body.

“Show off,” said Trak, who dodged return fire from a Sifter.

Harc raised one brow. “Efficient,” he replied.

Evie watched a bulkhead panel twist itself into a barricade and thought, very clearly, holy shit.

She was a neurologist, but she had only basic knowledge of neural electromagnetic field manipulation, especially the kind that involved the telekinetic abilities in the Baylan species. She’d read papers, but none of it had prepared her for watching a tall, metallic-haired Baylan Saar-king fold metal like origami with his mind.

The Sifter resistance collapsed. The soldiers who weren’t pinned, disarmed, or wrapped in their own hull plating dropped their weapons and surrendered. The docking bay went from chaos to controlled in under two minutes.

Jarran was still standing. Barely. He was bleeding, gasping for breath, with the blaster hanging at his side. His face was gray and slick with sweat. Taron was twenty feet away, his blaster rifle lowered, staring at his brother with an expression Evie couldn’t read.

For a moment, the bay was almost quiet. Just the hiss of cooling blaster barrels and the groaning of whatever metal Harc had rearranged.

Then, as if materializing from the shadows, Durik appeared behind her and pressed a blaster to her temple. “Be still,” he murmured. “I need you alive for a little while yet.”

Evie went rigid as he dragged her backward, out from behind the crates, into the open center of the bay where everyone could see them.

“Nobody moves.” Durik’s voice was raw. He sounded like he’d been screaming for days. “Nobody moves or I put a hole in her skull. And don’t bother using your mind powers, Baylan. This is a plastoid blaster.” That appeared to have been for Harc, who glowered at the Sifter leader.

Every soldier, every Virilian, every weapon in the bay went still. She could see them all. Taron with his rifle half-raised, frozen. Virak, rigid, his face carved from stone. Harc, his fingers splayed, watching. And Jarran, bleeding, swaying on his feet, staring at her with an expression that emptied her lungs.

She’d seen Jarran angry. She’d seen just about every emotion from him, but she’d never seen this. His whole body was locked, every muscle drawn tight, his gaze fixed on Durik with a focused hatred so complete it should have killed the Sifter leader on the spot.

“Pella Rin.” Durik pressed the blaster harder against her temple. Evie’s vision narrowed. “I came to bring you home.”

Jarran didn’t move. His eyes stayed on Evie. “My home is not with you.”

“Fool,” Durik spat. “You should have joined me instead of fighting me. You built an extraordinary empire.” Durik’s breath was hot and sour against her ear. “You were a god, and you give it up for what? A female? Some misguided sense of justice?” He removed the blaster just long enough to waggle it at Jarran. “But we can rebuild. You and me. The way it was.” His voice cracked on the last word. “I just need you to become who you were.”

He raised the other hand. A small, dark object. Oh, no. No, no, no. Evie knew immediately that this was the neural interface device. Compact, handheld, with a small transmitter array pointed at Jarran. It was the remote trigger for the implant.

Durik pressed a button.

The bellow of pain that came out of Jarran made her let out a cry.

He clamped his hands to either side of his head. “NEVER!”

It ripped out of him, raw and primal. The word echoed off the metal walls. His whole body seized and his knees buckled. He dropped to his knees on the bay floor.

“You cannot believe that you’ll get out of here alive, Durik,” Trak called out, his weapon trained on Durik, but also on Evie, since she was his shield. “Your forces are defeated.”