Corra didn’t breathe as the Dionysian began its ascent. She couldn’t swallow as the ship violently rocked and shook and fought its way up through the sky. She had to look away as they passed through the clouds, the empty thin layer of nothing, the fiery atmosphere and finally emerged into the cold black of space. As the ship calmed from its violent seizure into the sweet stillness of the vacuum, Corra could hold nothing back. The tears flowed forth and she wept.

For minutes, there was nothing in the bridge but the sound of her sorrow until she heard, very faintly, “I’m sorry.” Hesitantly and barely able to lift her head, Corra looked up at Fiearius, hardly daring to believe it.

“Cap’n?” she ventured tentatively.

“I’m so sorry,” he said again as he stared straight ahead into space beyond the window. “I couldn’t do it.” Her tears slowed and her sniffles weakened. Fiearius Soliveré was actually apologizing to her? It didn’t change anything. It didn’t solve it. But it was a step.

“We can still go back,” she murmured, laying a hand on his arm. “We can turn the ship around. We can go back. We can help them.” The desperation in her voice was apparent. “Please…”

At her touch, Fiearius suddenly looked down at her and for the first time, she saw just how horrified he looked. Horrified and…off. Confused. “I’m sorry,” he said again, sounding desperate himself. “I should have listened to you. We could have left. I was just–I didn’t—I couldn’t.”

Suddenly, he reached over and seized her wrist. Corra came to her feet and took a cautious step back, but his hold was strong and she couldn’t break free. She did, however, get the very distinct feeling that despite his eyes being fixed upon hers, Fiearius was no longer speaking to her.

“I couldn’t do it,” he pleaded again. “It was my fault. Everything. All of it. If I had just done what you said–” He brought his other hand to his temple and clutched it viciously as though trying to rip something out of it.

Corra had almost thought it was funny the other day when she’d caught Fiearius talking to himself about some feverish nonsense. Funny not in the way he was rather terribly sick and possibly dying, but funny at least in what he was saying. Now, however, she wasn’t laughing. “Cap’n…” she said again, worried now.

Thank the gods, then, that she didn’t have to do this alone. Corra was relieved to see that the doctor arrived in the doorway, out of breath but ready, a knapsack of med supplies in her hand. “All right,” said Leta, her eyes on Fiearius, “how is — “

“If I didn’t hesitate,” Fiearius went on, as if he were in the middle of a concerned conversation with the wall, “if I’d just done it. I’m sorry I didn’t read your message. I’m sorry. I just…I don’t know.”

Instantly, Leta’s expression shifted with confusion.

“Corra,” she remarked quietly, “who’s he talking to?”

Corra looked up at her, her concern drying her eyes. “I–I don’t know,” she stammered. “He’s just…” She looked down at the broken man attached to her hand and frowned. “Talking nonsense.”

“It’s not nonsense!” Fiearius snapped,  pulling her by the wrist closer to him. “I would do anything for you. You know that. Anything. Except…I couldn’t let him kill him. I had to do it. I didn’t have a choice.”

Corra knew it was just fever talking, she couldn’t help herself. Her curiosity was unbearable. “What are you talking about?” she asked quietly. “Couldn’t let who kill who? You had to do what?”

“I had to shoot him,” he replied shortly, looking up at her with his brow furrowed. “I couldn’t save you. I had to save him.”

Perplexed and strangely fascinated, Corra opened her mouth to ask more, but she was cut off.

“Corra,” Cyrus barked sharply at as he stormed into the bridge, causing the now even more confused young woman to almost jump at the sound of her name. “Get out of the way. Let Leta do her thing.” Corra nodded slowly and drew her hand away.

As she retreated to the back of the room, Leta came forward and dropped to her knees, pulling out a collection of needles and bottles from her bag.

Seeming not to notice his doctor, Fiearius’ eyes grew distant with longing toward the wall. Cyrus took one moment to grimace down at him and say softly, “That’s not her,” much to the confusion of the two other people in the room. Corra and Leta exchanged glances, but Cyrus pressed on quickly.

“How fast do you think you can get him back to normal?” he said. “At least coherent would be acceptable,” he added. “We just shot part of the engine with that takeoff and we’re running dangerously low on our fuel reserves. And I’m guessing we didn’t get paid for that one, right?”

“No,” said Leta, now pressing a cloth to Fiearius’ arm, “we didn’t get paid. Torian was there waiting; Solon double-crossed us. Double-crossed Fiearius, I mean.”

Corra watched from the sidelines as Leta cleaned and dressed the wound and began to put together a needle. As she worked, Fiearius’ eyes looked emptily over her head until he finally noticed Leta. As though she would understand this more than anyone else in the room could, he informed her, his voice too calm and haunting, “You can’t fix it. You can’t bring back the dead.”

His words brought Leta to pause. She halted in the middle of filling a shot, provided him a startled look, before hastily recovering. Whatever he’d meant by that, it clearly disturbed their doctor.

“I’m not,” she said, too forcefully. “I’m not. I’m — going to give you something for the fever; it’ll put you to sleep,” she finished quietly, and finally administered a needle to his shoulder.

It took only seconds for the patient in the room to quiet. Fiearius’ feverish nonsense faded as his eyes fell closed and his head slumped back in the chair.

Slowly, Leta stood up to her feet. Her expression was darkened. “He’ll be asleep for hours. Then, he needs rest. Actual rest. He shouldn’t lift a spoon tomorrow, let alone fly a ship.”

The bridge lapsed into solemn, expectant silence. Leta was standing there numbly, her brow knit, looking ghastly pale and rather lost. Corra was fairly certain she knew what  they were all thinking. The captain was unconscious. They had no plan, no next-step. They were out of money and very nearly out of fuel. And Solon Goddora was dead. One of the most powerful traders in the span. Dead at the hands of the man in the pilot’s seat. His ghost would be back to haunt them. That was for sure. Finally, she found the nerve to speak.

“Now what?” she wondered quietly from her place by the wall.

Cyrus heaved a long sigh. “Now?” he repeated, looking between the two of them and back down at his unconscious brother. “Now, we leave.”

“I saw Arty bleeding, trying to treat himself,” he told her. “And a couple others wounded too. Take care of them. Do your thing. I’ll handle the rest.”

“Oh, will you?”

Her words hung in the air with a bit of a nasty sting, but she didn’t take them back. Instead, she turned around swiftly and inhaled a sharp breath. Half a dozen faces of the crew looked back at her. A few people were crumbled against the wall, managing injuries. Barely.

“All right,” she said, her tone raised to address the room at large. “You heard him, I need help. If you’re hurt, find a place to sit. If you’re bleeding anywhere on the core of the body, don’t move far. Everyone not injured, pair with someone, apply pressure to the wound with whatever clothing you have. Or just use your hands, get them dirty. Press as hard as you can,” she explained, her tone heavy with significance. “And then press harder.”

Leta crossed through the room, assessing the damage on either side of her, seeing who needed the most immediate help. Actually, she knew who needed the most immediate help, and he was currently in the bridge. Looking around quickly, Leta had to appreciate their attempt to organize, but this ship needed a fuckin medical team.

Finally, the young woman dropped onto her knees before a particularly washed-out looking, sweating, shaking, younger member of the crew. “Hi,” she greeted, attempting a smile through her breathlessness. It was a quick effort for a better bedside manner, although she still preferred it when her patients were unconscious.

“Mind if I take a look?” she inquired keenly, and without waiting for an answer, she got to work.

–  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –

“Fiearius, stop!”

Still, nothing. Corra had followed the captain all the way from the cargo bay to the bridge, desperately trying get his attention, but no matter how much she shouted and how often she begged, he seemed not to hear a word. She had had a hard enough time just keeping up with him (for a wounded man, he was unusually fast), but as they reached the bridge and he collapsed into the pilot’s chair, she was finally granted the opportunity.

Breathlessly Corra seized the back of his chair and tried again. “Fiearius please. We can’t….we can’t just leave.” But the captain seemed wholly focused on his task, his eyes locked on the console before him and his hands furiously at work. Frustrated, Corra shook the chair. “Cap’n, stop, don’t.” Still, nothing. It was as if she were invisible. But she had to tell him. He had to stop. They couldn’t leave yet, they just couldn’t.

Finally, tired of this, she released her clutch on the chair and instead reached for his shoulder (the one that wasn’t bleeding profusely all over the bridge) and spun him around to face her. “Fiearius, fucking listen to me!” she yelled in his face and at last, some semblance of recognition flashed in his eyes. Her heart leaping, Corra jumped on the opportunity.

“Fiear, we can’t leave,” she told him desperately, her voice cracking under the weight. “You–you killed Goddora. This is our one chance. We have to go back. We can break up his compound, we can get those people out of there. If we leave now–” Her voice caught in her throat at the very thought of it as her eyes began to water. “If we leave,” she went on more steadily, “someone else is just going to take it over. Nothing will change. We have to do something before that happens. Take advantage of the confusion.” The tears were now starting to stream from her face. Her hand gripped his shoulder more tightly. She could barely get the words out. “Fiear, we have to save the allies. We have to go back. Please.”

But even as she spoke and laid out what should have been a decision clear as day, she began to realize that he perhaps wasn’t even listening. Yes, he was looking at her now, but his eyes were glazed over, his pupils wide and it almost seemed as though he didn’t recognize her at all.

Instantly, she wanted to scream. How did he not understand how important this was? He had been handed a unique chance, a chance she had been praying for her whole life, and he was just about to throw it away. Oh how she wanted to shout and yell and beat on his chest until he listened. Until he understood.

But all he did was stare right through her.

Suddenly, a crackle erupted from the intercom to their right and Cyrus’ voice sputtered out of it. “I’m ready,” he said, worry in his voice. “Can you do this?”

While Fiearius seemed entirely unable to comprehend Corra’s words, he understood his brother’s just fine. “Of course I can,” he replied, breaking free of her grasp and turning back around to the console. “I’ve done this a million times. It’s fine. I’m fine.” True to his words, Fiearius tapped the right combination of commands the the ship’s engine rumbled to life beneath them. Corra’s heart stopped. No, she thought furiously, they couldn’t. They couldn’t just abandon them like this.

Tears were streaming down her face now as she fell to her knees beside his chair, holding onto the arm of it like a liferaft. “Please, Fiearius. Don’t do this. We have to go back,” she said again, her voice quiet now, muffled behind her sobs. But it was hopeless, wasn’t it? He hadn’t listened before, why would he listen now? “This could be our only chance. Fiearius. We have to–”

The ship lurched forward. The intercom crackled again as Cyrus’ angered voice shouted, “No, it’s not ready yet!”

Fiearius, however, did not bother to hit the return button so it was only Corra who heard his reply. “We have to go now. If we wait, I’ll never see you again.” She frowned and lifted her head to stare up at him through fuzzy, water-soaked lenses.

Beneath her, the ship lifted off the ground and began its usual shudder. Subconsciously, she braced herself for the lurch and consciously tried not to think of all the people they were leaving behind. The people she’d known, grown up with, the people who were, for all intents and purposes, her kin. Her kin that she had abandoned three years ago. And abandoned now again.

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?”

Aghast, Leta wheeled around in alarm, staring at the man she’d worked to save, now lifeless in the shambles of his disassembled bed. The ease in which Fiearius had done the deed paralyzed Leta in place for several seconds, all the breath knocked out of her lungs. It might have been Roman’s innocence in this moment, his unknowingness of what was happening around him. It might have been because he’d been her patient (against her will, it was true, but still her patient). Whatever it was, the gunfire shocked her in place, as though she’d been shot herself.

By the time she’d turned around, Fiearius was lowering himself from the window.

Feeling nauseated, Leta leaned herself toward the window and watched as the rope of sheets went taut along the windowsill. Below, along the edge of the building, Fiearius was suspended in midair, his feet against the building as he eased down toward the ground.

The rope did not reach the ground, however: there was at least fifteen feet of space between Fiearius and the matress. After hanging off the last stretch of the rope for a moment, he let go and fell.

Amazingly, Fiearius somehow managed to land on the mattress with a roll and almost instantly he jumped back on his feet and called up to Leta.

“Come on, kiddo, no time like the present!”

For a moment, Leta could not decide what to do — shouting “fuck you” came nastily to mind — but as it turned out, she did not have much of a decision in the matter. Behind her, the doors flung open in an explosion of shouting and gunfire.

The panicky need to go, do, leave, act shot through her and before she could talk herself out of it, Leta holstered her gun, braced her hands at the windowsill and ventured, quickly and carefully, down the rope of sheets.

Grimacing, she lowered herself down the wall, pausing only slightly once she’d reached the end — true to his word, Fiearius stood there on ground to catch her — and, holding her breath, she released her grip.

In her falling motion toward him, Leta’s hands wrapped around Fiearius’ shoulders, her knees caved, but, thank the gods, her feet touched mercifully solid ground of the street with only a slight stumble between them. She staggered slightly against Fiearius, but she pulled herself tall to her feet, and shouted at once into his face.

“What was that for?” she demanded. “Why’d you kill Roman?! He wasn’t involved — he didn’t do anything –”

“Roman Lilliander? Didn’t do anything?” he repeated incredulously, cutting her a nasty glare. “That’s hilarious. Do you want me to tell you what he’s done? Because I don’t think you really wanna hear it — “

Turning his back on her, he started down the street the way they came. Leta’s feet pounded on the dirt beside him, and it was then she noticed something odd: looking down, she realized her palms were soaking wet and sticky. Blood. It wasn’t her blood. So that meant —

Her eyes went to Fiearius. His wounded shoulder, the same injury she’d been brought aboard to heal, was broken open and leaking crimson heavily down his arm. Of course it was. He’d fallen fifteen feet …

He did not seem to notice the injury, at least not consciously. As his eyes darted around the city and he searched for the clearest path for them to escape, the pain was settling in now. Even as he hastened forward, his expression was growing clouded, his eyes narrowing in something like confusion as he looked around over Leta’s head, curious, dazed.

Which was fucking fantastic, Leta thought, that her guide out of this city was starting to lose it. And unless she was very much mistaken, there were zinging shots of gunfire beginning to follow them.

Throwing a panicked look over her shoulder, Leta summoned her resolve, seized Fiearius by the elbow (he had halted in the middle of the sidewalk and looked up at a building) and dragged him into a narrow alley.

“Fiearius, “ she barked, resisting the urge to slap his face to get him to listen. “They’re following us. Can you get us back to the ship?”

“Following us?” he repeated, a little absently. He seemed determined to focus on her face, but his eyes were glassy. “Following us. Yeah.” Then he paused, and jabbed a thumb toward the sounds of gunfire behind them. “Oh no. These guys aren’t what I’m worried about. It’s the other ones that are gonna be a problem.”

Afraid of what that even meant, Leta squinted at him. “What other ones?”

But he simply continued his pacing. “This way, there’s a…there’s a bridge…” he mumbled, glancing blankly toward the open street. Meanwhile, he was shaking his injured, blood-soaked arm, as if to fling a fly off of it. “There’s the way..around…” His voice trailed off, until suddenly he seized his shoulder violently and shouted “Fuck!” into the din of the alley.

Then, just when Leta’s eyes went wide, he took a deep breath. “No no, it’s fine,” he went on, unaware of Leta’s alarm, as he walked in a small circle. “It’s gonna be fine. It’s totally fine. All fine. I’m fine.” He halted in place, looked at Leta, and insisted, “I’m fine.”

“Oh, boy,” Leta breathed sharply, a faint lift to her brow. Her widened eyes flew to the blood soaking cleanly on his shoulder, and she could imagine few things worse for the injury than the landing he’d just made. She’d seen this many times before in her emergency room, the mild hysteria that accompanied mind-numbing pain, and now with the gunfire at their back —

“It’s that way!”

His voice broke over the alley proudly. Leta thought he sounded downright crazed, but he beamed at her with confidence. “That’s it. The way around the back. Got it.” He nodded at her, then quickly turned down another street and ran off, shouting, “Follow me! Stay close!” over his shoulder.

As they dodged through the city, Leta had to wonder what kind of hell Fiearius had in store for them next, or if he even knew where they were going. But to her surprise and relief, his manic, scattered sprint along streets and down alleyways did lead them back where they started: the ship docks.

Cyrus seemed to realize after she did what, exactly, they were reading. Quickly he closed the document and tracked back to the original directory as he told her, “We shouldn’t be looking at that.”

Even as he said it though, his expression at her was less reprimanding as it was begging ‘please don’t tell anyone’.

Frankly, Corra was not concerned with anybody finding out. She was more intrigued by what she had seen. What she had read. Corra had never received a love letter in her life nor had she known anyone that had. Or rather, nor had she known anyone that had admitted to it. This was fascinating. How romantic and mysterious. She hadn’t actually believed that people did that kind of thing outside of fiction and yet here was this doctor who had love notes saved on her back-up. Maybe all the glamour of fiction wasn’t made-up after all. Maybe Corra had just been on the wrong planets to see it.

“Relax, Cy-cy,” she reassured her concerned friend with a friendly pat on his head. “She’ll never know. I won’t bring it up, I promise. But I do wonder who Ren is.”

Suspiciously, Cyrus said nothing. Too suspiciously. His response should have been ‘I don’t care’ or ‘yeah whatever’ or even ‘maybe he’s no one and Leta just writes letters to herself like a crazy person’. But Cyrus said nothing. He always was terrible at keeping secrets.

“You know,” she realized, narrowing her eyes at him. Instantly, his eyes widened and his lips sealed shut uncomfortably and she knew she’d caught him. “You know who he is. How do you know? Why would she tell you that? Why didn’t she tell me?” Those were stupid questions, she realized. “No, scratch all that. Just answer me one thing. Who is he?”

“I don’t know,” Cyrus lied, climbing out of his seat to have an easier out and holding his hand up to her as though it might stop her onslaught of interrogation.

“Yes you do. Tell me,” Corra demanded, stern, but good-natured. It didn’t take much threatening to get information from the younger Soliveré. Especially information he didn’t care all that much about. She couldn’t imagine his attachment to Leta’s admirer was that strong.

“No, I don’t know anything,” he insisted again, backing up towards the door.

Corra rolled her eyes and held out her hand as though he might physically drop what she wanted in her palm. “Just tell me, you’re gonna lose this and you know it.”

“That’s not true,” he muttered half-heartedly, stumbling backwards. “I won’t necessarily–”

Suddenly, Cyrus’ words were drowned out by none other than the Dionysian herself. Over their heads, the ship’s warning alarm — loud, booming, intrusive — blared from the speakers.

The Dionysian had exactly one alarm for all incidents.  Yet, the captain had often claimed that each alarm meant something different and he would rattle off what “each” one meant. That its noise had a sort of code that he had cracked and the sound differentiated with each emergency. To Corra and to every sane person aboard, it always sounded exactly the same and truthfully, she had no clue why it would be going off now. They weren’t even in the air. She glanced to Cyrus, who looked just as confused.

It was then that shouts and yells that began drifting up to the bridge from the decks below provided some clarity. This was no false warning. Forgetting about Leta’s mysterious lover, the two of them fled from the bridge and hurried down the stairs.

When they arrived in the cargo bay, it was crowded — not only with crew. From the position Cyrus and Corra took on the upper catwalk, they had a view of the chaos and arguing starting to unfold. A small team of men and women — all of them armed — had stormed up into the bay and seemed to be intent on taking the crates of guns that the captain was currently out peddling.

“Great,” Cyrus muttered sarcastically through his teeth, catching Corra’s worried glance and letting out a sigh. “As if the deal wasn’t already doomed enough as it is….”

Who were they? They couldn’t have been Goddora’s men, Corra was sure of it. Goddora would never dress his people so poorly and, had the deal been sanctioned, they wouldn’t have barged in with their weapons raised. They would have waited to be ushered in by the captain himself. This wasn’t right. The rest of the crew seemed to agree.

Arty, the Dionsyian’s product manager, was arguing with them, a handful of the crew backing him up. Unfortunately, Corra noticed, they were all unarmed and thus Arty blatantly yelling at the intruders was likely not the best idea. Not when they were carrying standard assault rifles that could clear the bay in all of ten seconds.

From where Corra stood beside Cyrus on the upper catwalk, her hands clenched over the railing tensely, she couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, but it didn’t matter. It was hostile. Even if she couldn’t hear the words, the loud bang as poor Arty took a shot straight to the shoulder was all she needed. The gunshot exploded over the cargo bay, and Arty staggered backwards.

And then all hell broke loose.

Furious and frenzied, the rest of the crew shot off, some straight towards the assaulters and some straight to hide. They’d been unarmed, but the one who’d done the deed went down regardless when five of her own peers piled onto him viciously. The others, wisely, fled down the ramp, shouting unintelligibly.

Corra and Cyrus looked at each other for a moment, both in shock. Frantically, her head whipped back to the ramp and the ground below just as a swarm of people, just as armed as their predecessors started flooding into view as they sprinted towards the ship, ready for battle. A battle that they, the Dionysian, was hardly prepared for.

“Shit,” Cyrus summed up in a single word, clapping his hand to his forehead in mounting panic. “Who the hell are these people and why are they attacking us?”

Corra glanced sidelong at him in disbelief. “I don’t think that really matters right now, do you?”

“It could,” Cyrus muttered back. “If we knew who they were maybe we could talk to them and…figure this out … “

Down near the ramp, bullets were flying, ricocheting off metal, shouts were erupting from both parties, people were running and ducking out of the fray Corra drew a deep intake of breath before looking back to him, wide-eyed.

“I don’t think they’re interested in talking, Cy-cy,” she stated firmly.

“Well…” Cyrus began, the panic cracking his voice, as he waved down at the crew below him. “Why aren’t we shooting back then? Shouldn’t we be defending ourselves? What are they doing?”

“What are they doing?!” Corra repeated incredulously. “They’re panicking. Like you’re panicking. They need their captain. Their captain who is currently a few miles away making arrangements to sell weapons that are about to be stolen out of our own cargo bay while we stand here panicking.”

They may have been without their captain, but Dionysian did have a replacement. A replacement who shared the same genes, a fact that, looking at the two of them, was easy to forget. But Corra knew because Corra had seen it before. She also knew that sometimes the second in command just needed a little push.

“They need a leader,” she pressed more seriously, grabbing his arm, hoping to remind him as well. True, Cyrus wasn’t like his brother. In fact, he made an effort not to be. That is, until moments like these. Cyrus stared at her for a moment longer, looked pained, before sharply turning away.

“Listen!” he suddenly shouted at the top of his lungs, his voice bouncing in echoes off the wide metal walls of the bay. No one had ever described the engineer as ‘commanding’, but in that moment, every crew member halted, looked up at him and went deathly quiet.

From her vantage point, Corra could see him swallow uncomfortably before continuing on. “You three!” he pointed to a hardly fight-worthy group. “Go with Corra to the armory and bring weapons and ammo back. We need someone covering the other entrance. You.” He pointed at Nikkolai. “Get a gun from the armory first. In the meantime, someone get those crates open. Use what’s inside. Cover the entrance, don’t let anyone up that ramp.”

Cyrus halted again and looked down at his crew below him, all looking up attentively and ready. He winced uncomfortably and Corra could see him struggling for that final order. The motivation. The inspiration. In the end, he gritted his teeth and settled on, “Let’s kick some ass!”

To his surprise, a sudden yell of approval roared from the crew below, before they all shot off in directions to follow orders of their stand-in captain.

At his side, Corra smiled a little pathetically at her friend and patted him on the back. “Nice one,” she commended, before rushing down the stairs herself, calling, “To the armory, with me!” just as the first wave began.