Jinx didn't fight Kaplan as he hooked an arm around her waist and dragged her down to the deck. Linked to her battle suit, her shield auto-adjusted to cover them, Kaplan beneath her.

The world exploded into white-green hell, multiple exskel-mounted plasma weapons opening up.

She squeezed her eyes shut to protect her overstimulated retinas; covered one ear with her free hand. The other ear she pressed against Kaplan's armour. But that hardly muted the assault.

The Xykeree were aggressively coming back online—a frigging army of them. Her shield wouldn't last. It hadn't been designed for this level of shit. In a few seconds, she and Kaplan would be baked—

Hold position. A taut voice sounded in her head, coming with a familiar sense of skull-shredding pain.

Her pulse jolted, recall of a colder, disembodied voice inciting a second of panic. "Kaplan?"

The hive's regaining autonomy, but lost cohesion. Can't be controlled as a whole. We need to eliminate the Qua-zi before the Xykeree recover coherence. Give me a second. The mask-covered head next to hers shifted, as if to get comfortable in the middle of all blazing hell.

Another vicious blast of plasma.

Her shield flared wildly, its failure imminent.

She braced for annihilation.

A cataclysmic flash and boom.

The world screamed into darkness. Flying debris. Scorching smoke. Another titanic blast struck—way too close. White-green energy roared overhead.

Not a standard infantry plaz bolt.

Heavy weapons fire.

Her heart slammed her ribs. In the flashing world beyond her shield... High-energy blasts. Hot, drilling lines of kinetic gunfire. Multi-legged silhouettes racing through fire and smoke; hundreds of Xykeree infantry exskels now awake and active.

A huge, black form rose over them.

Her breath stalled.

A scorp.

Smouldering, segmented heavy armour. Pincers riding low, weighed down by kinetic weaponry and missile-launcher tech. A tail rising through smoke, arching high overhead to ... burgeoning plasma.

The scorp's tail repeater cannon laid down a withering burst of plaz—just missing her and Kaplan, obliterating dozens of hivemates instead. Debris and heat clawed across her failing shield. She and Kaplan were about to be—

Another explosion tore past, sending up showers of broken tech. Flying chunks slammed down, taking out more Xykeree.

A second scorp, one with no tail left, lumbered through the carnage, smoke pouring from it.

The first turned to meet it, weapons firing—revealed a crawling mass of smaller exskels on its back. Workers and soldiers ripping into its armour and systems.

Understanding stole Jinx's air. The first scorp, unlike the other Xykeree swarming the deployment bay, hadn't defaulted to its basic instinct to defend the hive.

It was annihilating its own kind.

Its attack sliced past her and Kaplan cowering under her failing shield. It did no more than shake the Qua-zi's vessel—a ship full of incapacitated Rha Si.

Kaplan had total control.

Jinx's head went light, disbelief as much as relief—just as the shield before her overstimulated eyes spluttered out.

"Oh, fu—" She rolled off Kaplan, ignoring her injured shoulder's protests. Bells sang in her overstressed ears. Energy blasts lashed the bay's atmosphere.

She scrambled over shattered exskels to grab the pistol she'd lost—reached it just as targeting lasers lanced through plaz flares and smoke.

Long-limbed bodies reared over the dead and dying Xykeree around her. Three soldier exskels. The size of one-man mining pit pods.

A one-two-three punch of scorp plaz fire lit them up: blazing green hell—a storm of fragmented roach.

Kaplan.

She swung around to cover his—now upright and moving body. Shit.

She dove after him, not needing his haul-arse signal. Wounded exskels littered her path. She sidestepped flailing and twitching bodies, cursed and stumbled as burning pieces of exskel hammered down around her, spinning chunks of hell. Live roaches raced through smoke and fire—too close—everywhere.

Ahead of her, Kaplan lunged between the gleaming legs of a fallen huntsman and into cover. She threw herself in after him—just as a stinging run of kinetic bullets pummelled the dead exskel's armoured hulk.

"Fuck." She slammed her back against the huntsman's thorax, mirroring Kaplan's crouched position. Smoke and heat scorched her eyes and lungs. Clenching teeth against the pain in her shoulder, she hauled up her battle suit's cowl and reattached her mask, for all the good it would do her. The world beyond the cage of the huntsman's crumpled legs blazed. Her mask's HUD glowed with warnings and hundreds of life signs. She and Kaplan were dead meat in a roach grinder. The hijacked scorp was the only reason they weren't plaz baked already. It was doing serious damage, drawing the Xykeree's fire. But the second it went down—

Another run of bullets hammered her and Kaplan's position, spitting sparks.

"Still no psionic cohesion." Kaplan moved shoulder to shoulder to be heard. He hurriedly paired their coms so his next words sounded in her headgear. "The Qua-zi's interference probably eroded the hive's ability to self-network. Would explain the rogue scorp on Tirus. A small group might be controlled. Not the whole hive. There's no way to end this cleanly."

"What about the Coalition troops on board?"

"Fighting for their own lives."

"Sh—" An explosion drowned out her curse, jolted the wreckage around her. She braced, battling down panic. Her living a long life had never been on the cards, but this wasn't how it was meant to end: people she cared about dying; potentially millions more about to be lost in another war. She was the only one supposed to frigging die.

Kaplan gripped her wrist, his determination hitting her in a rush, like a weird mind-altering drug. "We stay alive as long as we can. If Shau received my 'pathed warning, reinforcements will be inbound. Stay low. Do nothing to draw the Xykeree's fire. They'll target clear threats. I'll ensure they have one that isn't us."

Another explosion shunted everything sideways. For an instant, through whatever unnatural mental link Kaplan had with her, she felt the extrasensory chaos—the battle—he was fighting. And she felt his doubt. There was no guarantee his warning had got through, and even if it had, reinforcements most likely wouldn't arrive soon enough. Ships from Feuria could reach the Hydra in minutes if their crews broke intra-system transit laws, but they'd then have to dock and blast their way in.

A stark sense of inevitability rolled through her. "Just tell me that alien prick is barbeque." The only possible consolation.

"Too much volatile psi to confirm. It's taking everything to control—" Kaplan flinched as if hit, then yanked her down. "Scorp's been taken out. It'll take me a moment to acquire anoth—"

The world went to hell. Multiple plaz bolts.

Jinx covered her head, blistering heat and violence engulfing her. War images reeled behind her eyes: blackened streets; plaz-baked bodies; piles of harvest victims in Xykeree larders. The recalled image of inbound Xykeree warships heading for Feuria and other populations filled her mind, slamming home the scale of the coming carnage. Billions of people, potentially whole worlds, could die if the Qua-zi weren't stopped.

And if the aliens succeeded in wiping out the Rha Si, the Coalition's only telepathic defence, more life forms would be experimented on—tortured.

The terror of being held down with her own mind overwhelmed her again as she cowered in the wreckage, an amplification of the powerlessness she'd felt her whole life.

With trembling hands, she confirmed her pistol's sync with her suit's battle systems and checked her ammo count. Eighteen rounds—God. A sense of finality gripped her. She couldn't stop this, save anyone.

But Kaplan could.

Lying prone next to him, she felt the burn of his mind at the edge of hers, recalled the power of it dragging her under.

He was their only chance. He needed to reach out to Shau again, ensure the Coalition knew what was coming.

To do that, he needed to stay breathing.

Jinx assessed the defensible firing positions around her. She'd buy him time, whatever it took.

Saying a silent prayer, she readied herself to move—

Kaplan grabbed her shoulder just as she was about to dive forward, take cover behind the huntsman's legs. "Keep down. Hold your fire. There's some order returning to the hive."

Jinx swore as another barrage of bullets hammered the huntsman. "That good or totally shit news?"

"I might be able to compromise more than one unit." His words set her gut lurching—revived a second of hope. "If full cohesion's regained, the whole hive becomes susceptible to psionic con—"

An electric hum bloomed.

Ice sliced through Jinx's veins. "Fuck. That alien's still—"

"Subhive's formed!" Kaplan's warning hit like a slap. "Qua-zi has control. Fifty soldier class incoming. All directions. Jinx—fire at will!"

Blood roared in her skull. She lunged for a firing position.

All around her, dozens of red dots danced across the wreckage—multiple lasers hunting for a target. Beyond the huntsman's crumpled legs, armoured bodies scrambled out of the plasma and smoke, a cohesive wave.

A dark swarm.

Her stomach dropped even as she snapped her weapon up. Her HUD blazed with targets acquired by her battle suit's systems. Twenty exskels rapidly closing. Twenty-five, thirty—

Too fucking many.

She punched the trigger—blew off part of a soldier exskel's head; fired again, and didn't frigging stop. She took out weapon systems, mech heads, legs, anything to slow the wave down. Her HUD flared with warnings. Rapidly decreasing range-to-target figures—an incoming wall of cyborg bodies.

Within a heartbeat, an ordnance range alert flared: multiple targets now too close for safe firing.

Ignoring it, she hammered out another explosive round.

Its detonation slammed her back in a hail of debris.

She scrambled to right herself, her head ringing, her HUD ablaze—a swarm of icons. Multiple enemy units all but on top of her.

Cold reality cut through her. Four metres to nearest target. Three metres, two—

The swarm hit the makeshift barricade of the dead huntsman with a deafening clamour. Everything lurched—went to hell. Shrieking and tumbling debris. Scrabbling bodies—everywhere. Stabbing limbs breaking through; then fanged heads, forcing themselves between the huntsman's legs.

She threw herself clear of lance-like limbs—choked on a scream as Kaplan vanished under a soldier exskel.

The roach seized up the next instant—smoked.

Electrokinesis.

Disbelief and relief crashed through her as she dove for better cover. Kaplan, like Cal, could fry anything close to him. And some of the swarm were now turning on one another, leaping and biting. None were firing. They hadn't since starting their charge.

Desperate hope surged up. The hive's cohesion... Kaplan had to be gaining control of—

A roach lunged from above.

Jinx punched a round into its fanged face—got slammed down by the blast. Pain splintered through her skull. Her ears rang—shrieked.

An alert flared on her HUD: four rounds left.

Fuck.

She scrambled to her knees, lifted her pistol to cover Kaplan while she could. Hijacking the hive was their only chance. If he went down, it'd be all ov—

Vice-like pressure at her temples. Dizziness, terrible and familiar.

Horror cut off her air.

Then agony ripped her mind apart, wiping all thought.

The world spun, dimmed...

And snapped into focus with cold, alien clarity.

Kaplan lit by flashes of hot light, dragging himself free of a smoking exskel. His darkened mask turning towards her, even as another large composite body leapt for him.

Her muscles went lax. Her pistol dipped.

Then jerked back up as invisible claws slid into her brain.

An involuntary twitch of muscles.

The jolt of an explosive round leaving her pistol.