Defiant (The Skyward Series Book 4)

On one hand, injecting myself with a random syringe I found on my enemy was…well, one of the most Spensa-like things I’d ever done. On the other hand, I felt an immediate fire spread through my veins, and my senses expanded. It was like the antidote was burning away the wall between me and the nowhere.

By the time Brade had noticed what I’d done, my powers had returned. We locked eyes. The air warped around me, the delver inside me cutting through inhibitor fields like a knife through fat.

I leaped forward, then hyperjumped. But I didn’t run for safety. I didn’t teleport to Detritus, or to my friends, or to the Defiant.

I teleported only a few meters, straight to Brade. I appeared above her, like an avenging Saint with wings outspread, and seized her throat. My momentum carried us forward and I slammed her down to the ground, then pulled back a fist. When I rammed it toward her face, however, she vanished. I dropped the short distance to the deck, twisting to find her directly to my right.

She ripped her sidearm out, but I slapped her hand and teleported the gun out into the vacuum of space. She vanished to avoid my next punch, appearing behind me—but I hyperjumped myself, next to one of the startled tenasi guards. I tore his rifle from his hands, flipping off the safety and spinning to level it toward Brade. I fired three destructor rounds in a burst, straight into the wall behind her as she vanished again.

Shrewdly, she teleported beside me. That got her inside my reach, so she could grab the gun and try to twist it out of my hand. I grunted as the guard stupidly tried to grab me from behind. I teleported him into the vacuum outside next to Brade’s gun.

I struggled over the rifle with Brade, sweating, our eyes locked, not speaking. And scud, she was taller, more muscled, and stronger than I was. She forced me back, slamming me against the wall, then began to wrench the gun free, a smile on her lips. But she didn’t realize—I was used to fighting people bigger and stronger than I was. My whole life had been spent resisting a force as vast as the galaxy itself.

I thrived on being the underdog.

I grinned back, then teleported away. I appeared across the room, and as Brade sought me out, I slammed my hands down on the room’s large metal desk. Her eyes went wide.

I teleported the desk directly above her head. She didn’t even get a chance to fire on me, as she was forced to jump away. I anticipated her though, knowing in my gut that she’d jump to that table by the hologram: its height would give her an excellent line of sight around the oval-shaped room.

Even as the desk was crashing to the ground—generals, soldiers, and aides alike shouting and trying to make sense of the confusion—I hyperjumped. Brade emerged right where I’d thought she would, and I appeared behind her on the table, delivering a solid full-knuckled punch straight to her kidneys.

She screamed and spun, but I teleported across the room.

I sought out her next tactically sound jump. The unexpected one, the one that would leave your enemy confused about where you might be…

There, I thought. In the middle of the hologram. It still displayed fighters arrayed as dots of blue and red, larger capital ships hanging in the air and glowing bright as they traded volleys.

As predicted, Brade appeared in the middle of it, using the holograms as cover, but as she tried to find me and shoot me—assuming I’d be distracted—I jumped next to her. This time I punched her in the neck, then laid another fist into her stomach. She gasped and hyperjumped again.

She wouldn’t leave the room though. That would be admitting defeat. And so I followed her, the two of us jumping around the circular metal chamber as if in some bizarre children’s game, using the other people as distractions or shields. In the midst of it all, the air warped and bent as my emotions surged. The exquisite energy of a fight churning inside of me, along with my anxiety for my friends and anger at Brade. A volcanic eruption of feelings pent up too long, held back for this moment.

I would not be contained any longer. I would end this.

Objects began to appear. Cups, rocks, datapads, one of the chairs from my old classroom. A chaotic mess of churning pieces of my life, mixing with the building intensity of the two of us leaping around the room, trying to pin one another down. I began to seize objects from the air as they materialized, throwing them anywhere I thought Brade would appear. I didn’t pause to see if they connected. I just kept going.

Flash. Throw.

Flash. Throw.

Flash. Throw.

“Ouch!”

I leaped at that sound, coming out of the hyperjump in a bull rush and smashing her against the wall.

Wow, M-Bot said in my head, his voice strong. Spensa. I had no idea you could move like that.

I was a blur. A person between two worlds, continuously slipping from one to the other. Brade began firing wildly around the room, hitting her own people, her equipment, increasingly frantic as I grabbed panels off the walls—ripping the metal squares free by touching them, then teleporting them around her. They clanged as they landed, obscuring her view, always there when she jumped.

Then I was among them. Hitting her in the kidney again, then grabbing her gun and teleporting it away. Then grabbing her and sending her into the vacuum.

She came back a second later, of course. But she seemed panicked, disoriented. I leaped for her, growling, as if I were some feral beast—half human, half delver. I—

She got a shot off and grazed me on the shoulder. Her pistol? Where had that come from? I’d teleported it out into the vacuum…

Oh. Right.

Maybe sending her to the same spot hadn’t been my smartest move. Fortunately, the pain only focused my fury, and I threw her to the ground. When she hyperjumped, I teleported into the air just above her and fell down on her prone form, slamming an elbow into her face.

When she hyperjumped away this time, she left blood on the floor.

“You bastard!” she shouted as she appeared again, the broken desk between us. “You half-civilized, miserable excuse for—”

She cut off as I appeared and—using the same move I’d performed on Jorgen all those months ago—slammed my fist into her knee and dropped her. I went for her throat again, knowing I could outlast her. She was stronger, had more resources, but I. Would. Never. Stop.

I was vengeance incarnate. I was death. I—

A flash bathed the room in blue light.

At first I kept fighting, thinking it was some distraction. Then I heard the radio chatter, the calls of victory from the enemy generals and ships. I saw the smile on Brade’s face, her split lip trailing blood, victory in her eyes.

“Didn’t you say,” she asked me, “that your grandmother was on that ship?”

I looked again, focusing on the hologram, watching as the flashes built up: bursts of light announcing the final demise of an enormous capital ship.

The Defiant was exploding.