Unfortunately, while the Dionysian was only fifty feet away, there were about twenty gunmen roaring up its ramp and spilling into the cargo bay. Goddorra’s men? How had they made it here already? From here, it looked like the Dionysian crew was putting up quite a fight.

Amid the roar of gunfire, the most they could do was duck behind the nearest fence and wait.

“Okay,” Leta began carefully, “so are we going around, or should we — “

“You can get there,” Fiearius said suddenly. He sounded mercifully like his normal confident self, but Leta was far from relieved by what he had just suggested. He dropped his hands on her shoulders and turned her around toward the ship.

“Go back out the way we came, around that building, underneath the other ships. They won’t notice you. You’ll be fine. There’s a small airlock on the backside of the Dionysian. Just a door, with a ladder. You’ll see it. They’ll have a someone there watching it.” After a short pause, his expression darkened and he said, “They fucking better have someone there watching it. Just announce yourself before you try opening it.”

Fiearius took a deep breath and stood up straight again. “You’re good. You can do this. I’ll distract them.”

Leta stared. This was the same person that had been talking feverish nonsense minutes prior. “Distract them?” she cried. “You can’t go that way. You’re seriously hurt, you’re already half-dead, you can’t g–”

Fiearius gave her a gentle push backwards, to which she steeled her legs. But it hardly mattered as Fiearius suddenly turned around, grabbed the gun from his hip, and dodged straight into the fiery fray. Standing there in shock, she swore she heard something of a battle cry rise in the air.

For one wild moment, Leta gave serious consideration to following after him, if for no other reason than to yell at him some more. But even if she somehow managed to stay alive for more than three seconds, she wouldn’t have been able to convince Fiearius of anything, anyway.

Growling in frustration, Leta clapped a hand to her forehead and wheeled around to gain a view of the path Fiearius had laid out for her. This side of the docks seemed relatively clear and out of the way of the action, and so, taking care to slide the gun out of its holster and into her hand, she slipped out from behind the fence.

Ducking her head, she swept beneath the other enormous overhanging ships, and save for the shots of gunfire in her peripheral and ringing horribly in her mind, all seemed clear.  She increased her pace, slipping around a corner as the Dionysian came gratefully into view — the explosive gunfire was closer now, but so was the door Fiearius had talked about, she could see it thirty feet away, and then —

With newfound resolve, she sprinted the rest of the way up the ladder, and as she wrenched open the door, a rather girlish scream met her ears:  Nikkolai, keeping watch with a gun in his hand, ducked backwards until he realized who she was.

“You!” he gasped, looking shaken. “Get in!”

Leta never thought she’d be so grateful to be inside the Dionysian, even the Dionysian under attack. Without breaking her stride, she rushed past the young deckhand, wound through the winding halls and found her way to the cargo bay.

Predictably, the bay was a mess. She saw Cyrus working frantically with the technical controls near the door, while all around him, gunhands ducked and fired. Amid the panic, yelling and gunfire, Leta slipped along the wall and ducked by the nearest familiar face. Corra.

“Fiear, do you see Fiearius?” she breathed, a slight crack to her voice. “He was — he ran out, he distracted them — ”

Corra was far too distracted herself, however, as she fired off round after round at the attackers, to even hear let alone answer Leta’s question. When there was the slightest break in the onslaught, she finally glanced over at her, confused. “What the hell happened out there?” she asked, exasperated.

Leta could hardly think of how to answer. “Fiearius shot Goddorra,” she managed at last. “He’s dead.”

The moment the words hit the air, Corra’s rifle dropped to her side, her eyes widened with disbelief. Breathlessly and almost desperately, as though hoping for her clarification to change, she asked, “He’s what?”