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"I said steer for the shoreline!"

I won’t survive this

I’ to die, and I’ll never find Jul

Raia braced as she was told, waiting second after second for an impact that would throw her into dark oblivion I’e jolt, then another, and another, and the deck was bouncing her like a pebble on the skin of a druhts went out Then everything stopped dead and she was flung into a row of bench seats

Now I’ods exist or not, and if they do I shall spit on the us e most needed them

But she wasn’t dead, or else she wouldn’t have been able to feel the rip in her shoulder rabbed her and tried to pul her with them

"Get out, my lady" It was Dunil "We’l be burned alive if we don’t run"

Instinctover bodies and not looking down to see who they were She ept up in the tide as everyone abandoned ship Cool, fresh air hit her face and she was suddenly skidding down a torn sheet ofa short distance onto grass and pebbles She had already run soe before she looked back to see as cracking and groaning behind her

Flames licked as left of the hul for a fewshe saw before she fled for her life was jets of leaking coolant ignite and send columns of flame into the air like blowtorches When had she last run like this, throwing everychase with her brothers and sisters As she grew up, she learned that females didn’t run They had no need to

But she needed to run now Her legs puh s screaht her ful in the back and lifted her off the ground She landed hard and the last gulps of air were knocked out of her Noise and blisteringly hot air swept over her moments later Al she could do was lie there, unable tojust howin the sky above her, and wait to die

Soain and pul ed her to her feet "Run,e "We have to get out"

"Where’s Forze?" She couldn’t get her breath "Where is he?"

"I can’t see hi for us"

"Who is?"

"The Arbiter’s troops"

Al Thel ‘Vadam’s forces had to do was head for the crashed ship, now a burning beacon on the edge of the city There was no hiding from them: if she tried to pass as a local in Vada fron keep The entire creas in the saht their way hoh thorn bushes and then into trees, and only when she ran out of breath and her legs wouldn’t carry her any farther did she stop, dropping to the ground Dunil stopped with her

"You have to keep going"

"Go Leavenow but survival Just when she thought her lungs would burst and she could never stand up again, a cold and intense clarity swept over her and stripped away every thought that wasn’t devoted to the immediate moment She reached into her holster and took the plase

"I have several hundred shots in this, don’t I?" She held it so that Dunil could see it "Tel me How h"

"For what?"

"To kil any fool who tries to kilJul was a secondary issue now and she was shocked to find she felt no guilt for thinking that way

She was no use to Jul dead "I have nothing to lose What do we do now, regroup or press on?"

Dunil looked down at her as if she was mad "Do you want the command view, or the real one? I could tel you that we press on and die gloriously, or I could tel you that the intel igent thing to do is to escape and coreater forces"

"Then il do the intelligent thing," Raia said She looked around, buoyed up on new clarity, and spotted soh the trees at a crouch, pistols in hands "I have never traveled far froet home now?"

"Ah, that’s the question," Dunil said

Forze cary "Raia, co to send Gusay to col ect you"

"Is that it? What about everyone else?"

"Let us worry about that You shouldn’t be here This is no place for an elder’s wife"

"Don’t start that arguain"

She could stil hear the sporadic crack and hiss of cannon soan to drown it out, a ship’s drives, and she assu up to take her home It was only when the sound multiplied that she realized there was a squadron of vessels soed: this was the Arbiter’s fleet, co to hunt them down and finish them off She wasn’t the only one She saw al the h it was to try to take on warships with pistols

But she raised hers, too

Then ‘Telca just ahead of her He held out his ar his crew for an address

"Do you hear that?" he cal ed "Do you hear it? Do you knohat that is?"

He was taking a huge risk Whoever was flying overhead would be able to see him But he looked more than unconcerned He looked triumphant

"What is it, brother?" one of the monks asked

"Listen to your coods have come to our aid"

Raia’s heart sank The y bolt to vaporize hiht the expression on Dunil’s face and Forze’s Al the troops were listening to so

She had no communications equipment She wouldn’t even have knohich channel to switch to