Enki didn’t want to do this, but he had no choice. If his mental map of the Ristval V served him correctly, they were three levels above the lower docking bay, where an array of escape-vessels were his for the taking.

Cut your way through the entire ship?

In the end, the solution was ridiculously simple.

Why not? It was the quickest and most direct route. He should have done this from the very beginning, instead of trying all that subterfuge nonsense with the fucking Imperial uniform.

How foolish he was to believe he could have fooled them, could have slipped Layla out of here undetected. Perhaps too many easy kills had made him arrogant.

Enki fired a few more rounds of plasma into the hole, hoping to make the soldiers above hesitate. Terse voices drifted to him, and he heard someone order several of the soldiers to run down to the lower level.

Shit.

They needed to get out of here soon. He hated to admit it, but the sheer effort of trying to divide his attention between his enemies and Layla while trying to suppress the Tharian… it was becoming taxing.

Sooner or later, he feared he would slip up and make a mistake that might prove fatal—for Layla.

He could not lose her now. Not after she’d survived so much. Not after he’d discovered her grace, her bravery, her subtle humor.

She was the reason Enki and his brothers had a purpose in this post-Imperial Universe. Humans were life, and without them, the Kordolian race was doomed.

Do not fuck this up, he told himself, summoning his exo-armor beneath the Imperial uniform. This time, he embraced the pain, drawing strength from it. He kept his face exposed, knowing he could draw out his helm in an instant.

“That way,” he snapped, pointing down the corridor. “Run.”

Layla didn’t hesitate. She ran. Enki loped after her, matching her pace. At least there was a small amount of light down here, and she didn’t seem to have any trouble finding her way.

Enki glanced sharply over his shoulder to see a lone soldier dropping through the hole after them, landing on his feet with a thud. The soldier raised his plasma gun…

“Layla, get down.”

She didn’t question, didn’t hesitate, just dropped to the floor as Enki spun and fired before the warrior had a chance to shoot, squeezing off three simultaneous plasma blasts.

The soldier was thrown back along the floor, wisps of smoke rising off his exo-armor. Was he incapacitated? Dead? Enki didn’t really give a shit.

“Take this,” he said, giving his second gun to Layla. “Can you see the opening from here?”

“Only just.”

As if to illustrate Enki’s point, a blast of blue plasma flared through the opening, hitting the spot where they’d been standing only moments ago.

Hitting the fallen soldier.

Idiots.

“Don’t worry. They can’t hit us from here. The angle is too tight. Layla, I’m going to cut through the floor again.” He reached out and placed her finger on the gun’s trigger, removing the safety and raising her arm. “If any of those fools try to come through that hole, I want you to shoot them. Can you do that?”

“Y-yeah.”

Enki wanted to explain the rest to her—the recoil, the correct stance, the fact that firing a powerful plasma weapon would probably cause her pain in her injured state—but there was no time.

He hated the idea of seeing her in pain, but he knew she could handle it.

Pain wouldn’t kill her, and she was strong; a survivor.

Enki dropped to his knees again and started to saw through the floor, knowing he could spin around and catch her if she was thrown back.

Thank the Goddess the floor was not made of pure Callidum, but a weaker composite.

As he was just about to finish the cut, Layla pulled the trigger.