Page 16 of Aura Awakened

With them out of the way, he extends his vines like ropes on descenders, allowing us to quickly and smoothly drop down the shaft—much faster than the bots can follow, or even process.

As we fall, a shrill, embarrassing shriek erupts from within me.

Fillian gives me a concerned glance. “Are you all right?”

I manage a nod. “I’m fine. It’s just my acrophobia acting up.” I cling to him a little tighter.

“You have a medical condition? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It’s nothing. Just a little fear of heights. Well, more like a fear of falling.” The plunge is giving me the same whooshing feeling you get when a rollercoaster takes a massive dip. For the record, I hate roller coasters.

Fortunately, Fillian moves fast, and before we know it, we’re back on the bottom deck. Now all we have to do is fight through the bots swarming the crawl space, get back into the main part of the ship, and hide until Fillian can transport us to his vessel.

Sure, no problem at all.

FILLIAN

I set Aura down as gently as I can, given the bots swirling around our feet, and retract my vines.

“One more plasma blast should clear the way,” I tell her. I use the pulse to annihilate the bots blocking our path and hurry her into the tunnel ahead of me. This will dump us back out into the cargo hold. From there, we just have to stay one step ahead of the Malifects.

We hustle through the passage and out of the hatch in record time, emerging back into the dark cavern of stasis pods. I quickly pull out the nanocraft’s remote and check its status: There’s still an error. This damned nebula is shutting down all its essential functions.

“C’mon,” I whisper to Aura, moving to a console in the corner. “Maybe I can access the ship’s systems and see how much longer we’re going to be at these coordinates. We’ve been moving to the edge of the nebula, but it’s taking forever. I guess mining Somnambulis is slow going.”

I tap a button, trying to figure out the controls, but before I can do anything else, the ship’s sirens start screeching again and a bright light illuminates the room, strobing in time to the alarm.

“Shit. Evidently the bots have alerted the Malifects to our last known position.”

Even as I say it, the doors to the cargo hold open with a pneumatic swish, revealing a contingent of the enemy.

“Halt!” the lead Malifect screeches, although it’s clear they don’t know precisely where we are, thanks to the flashing lights. “Surrender and you will not be harmed!”

Yeah, right.

I grab Aura’s hand and silently hurry her into a more defensive position behind a row of pods.

“You got a plan?” she asks.

“I’m working on it.” I check the charge levels of my plasma pulse. I have about five shots left, give or take. As weapons go, it’s powerful, but not long lasting. The power drains quickly. If I’d planned for this mission better—or, let’s face it, at all—I’d have brought something better. Live and learn. I hope.

I hand her the nanocraft remote and quickly explain how to activate the vessel. “I want you to stay behind me. I’m going to take out as many as I can, but if something happens to me, you get on my ship, you understand? You should be able to use auto navigation to follow the Malifects through the jump gate. Once you’re back in my normal quadrant, someone from the Coalition will find you. Got it?”

She rolls her eyes. “I’m not leaving you here. We’re getting out of this together, got that?”

I take a quick glance around the pods; there are eight Malifects searching the room. It won’t take them long to find us, and as soon as I fire, the plasma will light up the place even more than the strobing overhead lights. The relative darkness is basically the only advantage we have right now. I hate to give that up.

I turn around to make sure Aura is still hiding, but she’s not where I left her. She’s moved down the row and is fiddling with something.

I don’t dare risk calling out to her.

All of a sudden, she starts moving fast, darting from pod to pod, pressing buttons as she goes.

What the hell?

One by one, the pods start opening; as they do, she yanks the Somnambulis lines free from each prisoner.

She’s waking them up.