Pain ripped through Kaplan as Jinx's mind tore away from his. His ears rang with the abrupt mental silence and the punch she'd just taken. The alien in the humanoid exskel, the Qua-zi scientist he'd interrogated through its forced psi link to Jinx, had knocked her cold.

To stop him. To get to him.

He shook off the blow and tried to reconnect with his senses. The punch had only felt physical to him. For Jinx, it would have been.

He shoved down his fear for her. The alien considered Jinx unique, invaluable to its research. It wouldn't do her permanent damage.

He, Cal, and all other Rha Si were another matter.

He forced open his eyes. His vision swam: HUD lights and darkness. The Hydra's psionics drummed against his skull—muted now, his psi receptors no longer jammed open by sabotaged tech.

He was still in the deployment bay, sprawled on his back near the edge of the Qua-zi ship's ramp. The workers that had been dragging him had stopped.

Thousands of exskels surrounded him. All unnaturally still.

All enslaved.

The scale of the Qua-zi's betrayal drove the air out of him. They'd sold themselves as allies—victims—in the past war, but they controlled the Xykeree host, had used it to gather research subjects, even elicit volunteers, like the Originals. They'd manipulated—crippled—Rha Si from the beginning.

And they were about to start another war just to wind up that 'unsatisfactory' experiment.

He had to find a way to warn the Coalition. They were about to be blindsided.

The hive's psionics surged. The workers gripping his legs released him.

Kaplan froze, halfway upright. He tried to tune in, gauge the threat, but everything remained muffled, as if he were trapped in a tight, dark space.

His skull.

He stifled the claustrophobia. The painful, open flood of psionics he'd endured all his life hadn't been natural; it'd been a side effect of his reg tech locking his telepathy to his physical location. He'd also been trained to route everything through his neurotech, and he'd literally burned that bridge.

He'd need time to adapt.

Time he didn't have.

The hive's psionics rose in a drowning tide.

Every mechanical forelimb around him lifted in eerie synchronicity, then began to wave.

His blood iced as the movements escalated with the rising psi. Thousands of minds resonating.

Amplifying the hive's psionics.

Feeding the Qua-zi power.

Kaplan cursed—braced.

The telepathic strike hit like a wall, knocking him back flat.

Everything went dark—then bloomed brilliant. Pain. Excruciating pressure. A brute-force attack on his mental shielding, more extreme than anything his grandmother had ever inflicted. Qua-zi were strong telepaths in their own right. But with an entire Xykeree hive behind one...

It took everything he had to prevent a mental incursion. The familiar burn of overload blazed behind his eyes. He scrambled to counter the attack, reinforce his shields. But he had no tech to channel or amplify his abilities.

A clunk: a sound nearly lost in the blaze of pain. A whir: mechanical systems.

A shape loomed on the alien ship's ramp. The Qua-zi. Not in the standard biosphere unit of its kind, but a droid-like, armoured vehicle. The alien had been hunting Jinx in the backworlds. It'd chosen tech to protect and disguise its soft gelatinous body.

Kro. Kaplan dredged the name from the intel he'd taken. The child of Mu, the Qua-zi ambassador. Mu, as an advisor to the Rha Si research teams, had to be the traitor on the Silver Dawn. The diplomat and scientist had spent decades helping to create and train Rha Si.

Now, the alien and its kind planned to wipe their human creations out, unleash the Xykeree host—potentially killing billions of other life forms.

Gritting his teeth, Kaplan planted his hands and heels against the deck and pushed himself back. The Qua-zi might have rationalised their decision as a necessary cull, but unlike the logic-driven aliens, he knew fear when he felt it.

They feared what they'd created. They feared a loss of control.

A loss of territory.

The nexus, that bleak 'other' dimensional plane he, Cal, and Jinx had briefly linked through; it wasn't just a communication hub. It was a vast mental and sensory extension.

The Qua-zi would burn worlds to protect it.

Metal clanged: Kro starting down the ramp.

Kaplan dragged himself along the deck, fighting to hold his shields, resisting the brutal compulsion to black out. He had to get clear, warn the Coalition. But he could barely think past the hot, expanding haze in his skull. Frying receptors and—

An outpouring of energy. From him.

The realisation knocked out his breath. The burn behind his eyes, the one he'd felt for months; it wasn't just overload. It was a sign of high psionic output.

His mind was actively shielding, disrupting incoming signals to cancel or weaken them, preventing total overload and a forced telepathic link. His destabilising abilities over the past year ... they'd begun to augment his shielding without involving his compromised tech.

More clanging footfalls: Kro dismounting the ship's ramp.

Hissing out an oath, Kaplan pushed himself further back, between rows of entranced Xykeree. He wasn't at critical overload yet. His psionics were functional and no longer leashed. His telepathy—

It was no longer locked to the minds immediately around him.

Kaplan's heart boomed. The Qua-zi's nexus. If he could link through it like Cal had... Jinx couldn't be the only Rha Si able to hear a psionic mayday. Kro feared inadequately controlled empaths—like Cal's brother. The teenager's destabilisation and distress couldn't be a coincidence, not with Cal's abduction. But the kid's neurotech had since been retune—

A savage telepathic blow sent everything spinning.

Kaplan tried to reach out, find that ghostly connection he'd sensed with Jinx. But he had no point of reference. The link had been everywhere and nowhere.

A heavy, metal foot struck the deck—right next to him.

The hive's psionics became crushing.

Struggling to think, he pushed himself back, tried to buy time to—

Footsteps—light, quick; not the alien's.

A loud clang.

More heavy footfalls—stumbling back, retreating.

The telepathic assault broke off.

Kaplan collapsed, tried to collect his wits, but hyped on adrenaline, his newly unleashed psionics blazed out of control. Ambient psi noise drowned out his physical senses:  the thrum of resonating Xykeree minds; discordant whispers beyond, outside the deployment bay—

Non-Xykeree minds; familiar, close—

Pain burst across his senses—not his. A muffled shriek sounded then another bang as something—someone—hit the deck hard.

Kaplan wrenched his psionics under control and fought to clear his vision. Jinx. His gut lurched. She was no longer on the alien's ship. She was down, flat on her back by the ship's ramp, Kro's exskel hand around her throat. Her face was bruised from the alien's earlier blow, but fury lit her eyes as she clawed at the mech tech crushing her windpipe.

A Fulmin VP180 pistol lay on the deck near her, but out of reach. Smoke plumed out of Kro's armour where the back plate met the rear of the exoskeleton's helmet. Something blue-green glowed hotly between the pieces of moulded composite.

A plaz blade.

Kaplan swore, fear warring with admiration. Jinx had rammed the weapon in as far as she could, threatening the Qua-zi's organic body and life-support systems. Kro, bloated with power, had thought her no threat, had seen only an untrained Rha Si with rudimentary mental shielding. The alien hadn't accounted for her plex-hard head.

She wasn't the only one it had underestimated.

Kaplan eyed the pistol a few metres away, thought of what he'd sensed outside the deployment bay. The Qua-zi's focus on psionic threats was a weakness he needed to exploit. But it would hurt like hell—most likely kill him.

So be it.

He staggered to his feet.

Kro's amplified power slammed into him.

He fell forward, only just caught himself before his facemask smashed into the deck. The hellish pressure on his mind returned, tunnelling his vision. His brain felt like it boiled. Blades of pain started to slide into his temples—a sign his shielding was failing.

Not an option.

Kaplan ground teeth. He couldn't let the alien into his mind, couldn't let it know what he'd sensed outside the bay. Better the overload kill him.

Subject A-529, cease resistance. Kro's telepathy lanced through the psionic barrage. Brain damage will result in data loss. The words—cold logic—were typical of a Qua-zi. But the alien's actions, the uncharacteristic use of physical violence, spoke of rage.

Kaplan's stomach locked. Fear, now anger. Human-like emotions. Not natural for a Qua-zi. Something was wrong... Kro's experiments. The alien had been torturing Rha Si, mainlining their disturbed psionics for months. The Qua-zi had been affected—might not still be rational.

An unexpected release of pressure.

Kaplan collapsed face down on the deck, coughed up blood inside his mask.

Early termination undesirable. The telepathic decree came with churning undercurrents. Enhanced load tolerance and mental shielding to be investigated. Subject A-529, allow psionic subjugation or control will be obtained via an intermediary, a stratagem the subject is familiar with.

Kaplan's blood chilled. Jinx. The alien was threatening to use her like he had to get to it. But that'd require him to hold a link with her. He wouldn't—

Hot blue-green light flared at the edge of his vision.

Pulse going double time, Kaplan battled to lift his head.

Kro knelt over Jinx, her plaz blade now in one mech fist. Jinx clawed at the robotic hand stifling her air, kicked at the Qua-zi's armoured body, her movements desperate, uncoordinated—and losing strength.

Indifferent to her struggles, Kro shifted the blade to a point above her shoulder. Initial observations indicate adverse mental and physical stimuli may induce psi linkage. The alien pressed the blaze of plasma down against Jinx's armour—into a weak point, between composite plates.

Kaplan jolted forward—had a telepathic blow drop him face down on the deck. His ears rang. Blood ran from his nose. He fought to get his legs back under him. Zex light armour could dissipate energy bursts—plaz fire—but not a long, concentrated burn.

He felt it when the join started to fail, that empathic link the alien recognised snapping into place.

Confusion. Heat—sharpening to pain. Understanding blooming—then brutal fear.

Jinx's first shriek was muffled as she fought to resist the burn as the seam in her suit gave way. Her next ... held nothing back.