The loud, terrible noise of the Starfall Lance had finally stopped. The screaming alarms were all silent. The powerful buzzing of Nomad’s cosmic power was gone.
A series of red emergency lights flashed around the cockpit, making shadows that appear and disappear. Flash. Flash. Flash. Each blink showing a scene of broken screens, unresponsive control panels. And Jonah, lying in his pilot’s seat, not moving at all.
Vanessa pushed herself up from her seat. Her body felt light and difficult to control in the zero gravity. She floated over to him, her heart beating fast.
"Jonah?" she whispered, her voice a small sound in the silence.
He didn’t respond. She gently touched his shoulder, and her hand felt cold when she pulled them back. She quickly checked the life support readings on his suit. The numbers were dropping really, really fast.
Her mind, which was usually so smart and was always working fast to find answers and solutions, became completely blank. It was because of the sudden fear she felt. But then, all her years of training as an engineer and a soldier took over. She forced the rising panic back down. She made her mind start to figure things out, one small, logical step at a time.
She moved to the main power console. It was off and showed no sign of life. "Start up," she whispered, her hands quickly touching the dark screen, trying to make it work. "Show me something. Anything that can help."
She changed the flow of power from the cockpit’s emergency battery, which was only supposed to keep them alive for a few hours. She put every bit of that power, not into the normal systems, but directly into Jonah’s seat, creating a bubble of energy around him. His life support levels became stable, but only barely.
The fix would only work for a little while. It was just a small help for a problem that would cause death.
She looked at Jonah’s arm. His God Mark, which was usually a solid symbol of golden light, was blinking weakly like a dying candle.
The psychic backlash. When Nomad had died, a part of Jonah had died with it. His soul was still connected to the Progeny’s dead shell and the connection was draining him, burning him out from the inside.
"Okay," she said to the silence, her voice a little shaky. "Okay, I can fix this." She was not just talking to herself. She was trying to convince the universe. "I just need to restart Nomad’s core. That’s all."
For the next few hours, she worked like a woman who was possessed. She tore open maintenance panels, using her tools quickly and desperately. She tried a manual reboot of the main core, sending a weak pulse from the emergency battery into the heart of the dead Progeny. Still, nothing happened.
She tried creating a feedback loop, using her own runic tools to try and energize the faint magic left in Nomad’s systems. The crystals in her tools glowed for a moment, then went dark.
Nothing worked. It was like trying to start a fire with wet wood in the middle of a rainstorm.
She moved back to the main viewer, her body aching with tiredness and a growing despair. She looked out at the sea of stars. They were so beautiful. They didn’t care that they were dying out here.
She watched Jonah, his face pale and still in the pulsing red light. He looked calm, but she knew it was a lie. He was stuck in an inner battle, with his life force being torn apart by the remaining connection to his dead creation.
Her efforts had failed.
She had built a machine strong enough to survive a massive magical attack, but she couldn’t create one small spark of energy to save the man she loved.
Just as she was about to let the tears finally come, a new sound cut through the silence.
It was a loud alarm. A warning about something nearby. Whatever it was, it was moving fast.
Vanessa’s head snapped up, her tiredness disappeared completely, replaced by a sudden rush of energy. Her first thought was Julian sterling’s syndicate.
They had tracked them here. They had come to finish the job.
She rushed to grab her multi-tool, holding the small, heavy object as if it were a weapon. It was completely useless, she knew. It was just a piece of metal against whatever Sterling’s forces would send. But she was determined not to let them take Jonah without making them fight for it.
She stared out the main viewer, her heart beating fast, expecting to see the insect-like shapes of the Syndicate drones.
Instead, she saw a miracle.
Something shimmered in the darkness, like heat haze on a summer road. Then, with a smooth ripple, a ship appeared.
It was totally different from any technology she had ever seen. It was not a machine with sharp corners and basic, practical armor. It was a silver ship, shaped like a huge bird in flight with long wings.
And on the body of the ship, it showed the Silver Phoenix Empire signature.
She hadn’t even had time to think about what was happening in front of her when her private comms channel, a secret frequency she had built herself, came on.
A voice that was calm and familiar spoke into her ear.
It was Princess Ariana.
"Help is on the way," the princess said, her voice a calm, commanding presence in the chaos happening in Vanessa’s mind.
Vanessa couldn’t say anything. She could only stare at the silver ship, her mind struggling to process what was going on. How? How did they manage to get here?
As if she had heard the question Vanessa didn’t say, Ariana’s voice returned, and this time, it held a sense of strong loyalty. ɪꜰ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴛᴏ ʀᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴏʀᴇ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs, ᴘʟᴇᴀsᴇ ᴠɪsɪᴛ novel~fire~net
"I was not about to let my nation’s greatest ally die out here, all alone."