Destiny's Blood by Marie Bilodeau (best authors to read .TXT) 📗

She wished she could join him.

“Avienne?” The voice flared from the communications panel and Zortan turned it on to reply. Nothing happened.

Blood and bones! Travan had been scheduled to repair this shuttle, but had never gotten around to it.

She swallowed hard, feeling the lump in her throat. It felt good to regain some sensation, even if that sensation happened to be discomfort.

“Avienne,” Ardin continued, “I’m reading an explosion on the Destiny. Something’s wrong. I’m heading back to check it out.” He paused. “Stay on course. We’ll meet you on Mirial, with Cailan in tow.”

Avienne managed to moan. It was low and guttural and all she could do, but the moan carried from deep within her throat into the shuttle. Zortan tensed beside her, and Avienne knew he feared for Layela, the girl he had sworn a lifetime ago to protect.

“I’m going to try to follow,” Zortan said. He grabbed the controls firmly and pulled them back toward him to stop forward thrust.

“Hold your course, Destiny 3,” another voice boomed over the communication link, and Avienne recognized it as Gobran Kipso’s. Before them, out of a swirl, emerged the Victory and a number of smaller ships, all the survivors of Mirial’s once-proud fleet.

“Hold course or we will have to fire on you,” Kipso paused. “I would rather not do that.”

The communications clicked off and around them, vanishing and re-emerging through the thick clouds, the Mirial fleet closed in. They were surrounded. If Avienne could have moved, she would have tried to lose them in the clouds. She would have escaped them and gotten Ardin away from the Destiny.

“Avienne,” Ardin’s voice came up again. “Avienne, the Destiny’s in bad shape.” She heard him take in a breath of stale shuttle air. “Her starboard engine is completely gone, and she’s without lights and power. I can’t hail Cailan, but we’re boarding her now to get him out, if he’s still in there.” He paused. “Blood and bones, Avienne, you’d better be all right, yourself.”

Zortan sat up, his spine straight and his hand dropping down to the pommel of the sword resting beside his chair. As Avienne wondered if he could somehow sense that Layela was in danger, an explosion rang across the communications system from Ardin’s shuttle. Avienne held her breath.

They had been in the shuttle bay when the Destiny exploded!

“Ar..” Her body had started to regain feeling and she might have been able to whisper his name, but her mind and soul were captured in the clutches of loss and her voice failed her.

Tears coursed down her face, but she couldn’t bring her hand up to wipe them away. She couldn’t tell if it was the drugs or the shock that caused her continued paralysis.

Zortan sat still beside her, silent and unmoving as their shuttle glided along with Mirial’s fleet. Gobran spoke softly.

“My sincerest condolences. The Destiny and her crew will not be forgotten.” And the system went quiet, Gobran Kipso probably already planning his next step and leaving the Destiny’s carcass behind.

Avienne understood him, in a way. For him, there was still Yoma, parading as Layela on the great beast before them. But for Avienne, who only wanted to grab the controls and find her brother or die trying, there was nothing left.

Nothing at all.

i

Captain Kipso stood beside his chair, the tension on his bridge as palpable as the shields of Mirial which nuzzled at the Victory. Gobran was not fooled by their appearance, knowing that any ship not built with the correct combination of alloys and ether would crumble at their touch. For the thousandth time he wondered if that was what had doomed the Destiny — a shabby repair job done quickly and without the right plates. A repair job his crew had completed under his supervision.

For the thousandth time, the same answer haunted him as he clutched the back of his chair. There was no point dwelling on it. Destiny’s fate had been sealed long before Gobran had found her again.

The jostling stopped and the ship suddenly glided forward easily. The sky cleared and the screen dimmed to compensate for the great light that now washed over them: Light from the first and purest sun.

Before them lay Mirial. The great sun of Mirial was tired and not nearly as bright as Gobran remembered. Long ago, it had warmed his skin in the summer. He wondered if the sunsets were still riddled with the deepest of blues, reds and oranges. Now, as far as the eye could see around the sun, the universe was purple, proving that the shields were still strong.

Caught in the sun’s gravity, a chunk of planet floated not far from the Victory, the giant piece of rock black and charred and desolate. The planet had been small and, like all planets this near to Mirial, Gobran knew it had once borne life. Slowly it rotated, half of it still showing the sphere it had once been, the other half crumbled and destroyed, its exposed core frozen and hard.

“Is that…” Loran began.

“No,” Gobran whispered. “Our home was protected by strong ether.” After years of studying the maps of his home, always thinking of where Mirial was now in her orbit, always prepared for the day when he would find the heir and bring her home, he knew where to look. He wished he felt pride and not simply dread as he pointed to the right. Just at the sun’s edge, a small dark dot crossed against the dimmed ball of light. His voice was hushed as he spoke the words he had waited so long to speak.

“That...is Mirial.”

He could not see the surface of the planet from here, only that it still existed. He forced himself to stay where he was and not take a step forward to try to get a better view. Despite his confident words to Loran, he still wanted to see for himself that Mirial had been protected. A chill caught hold of him and went to his bones, and he wished he could