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  I surprised even myself with how swiftly I moved. I pushed my legs into a combination jump/run that put me next to Howard in a heartbeat.

  “I can kill you,” I said. “And I don’t need a lasergun to do it, either.”

  “You could,” he replied calmly, with a serene smile. “But you won’t. You’re not bred to it. You’re not meant for it.”

  He was right, at least on the latter two accounts. Whether I would or not, neither of us would discover, because at that moment Kaelyn, startled into flight by Howard’s outburst, ran toward the shelter of a stack of crates waiting to be loaded on the ship. The secbots turned toward her, their jointed arms each lifting identical laserguns.

  “Shoot that freak!” Howard ordered.

  “No!” The shout burst from my throat with the force of a bullet.

  Kaelyn froze, eyes wide, wings for once stilled in shock. A breeze from the open hangar door lifted the silk of her hair away from her face, highlighting the lovely, alien features that so incensed Howard Adar.

  I didn’t have time to think, I just reacted. I flipped myself forward onto my hands and kicked my legs over my head. Once, twice, I flipped end over end to end up between my daughter and those who sought to cause her harm. I stood just in time to shield her from the shot that hit me in the chest and would’ve hit her in the head.

  Instant, blinding agony ripped through me, and I went to my knees. I pushed her down behind me, still shielding her, and the second shot took me in the right shoulder.

  Kaelyn scrabbled on hands and knees behind the shelter of the crates. I sank to the ground, willing away the pain, trying to no avail to force my body to respond. Declan moved so fast that to my pain-dimmed vision he seemed to blur.

  He kicked the gun from the closest secbot and sent it hurtling to the floor, where it skittered along the cracked pavement and disappeared beneath the ship. Without stopping, he jammed a fist into the secbot’s optic center and ripped out its eyes, complete with dangling, sparking wires.

  Eddie leaped on the other bot’s back and tore away the control panel at the back of its neck. The bot swung at the waist and tried to shake him off, but Eddie didn’t stop until he’d torn out the handful of wires that made up the bot’s communication system.

  I couldn’t black out, no matter how much my body wanted to. The pain that should have sent me spiraling into darkness stabbed me into a state of almost hyper lucidity. As it was, I heard every word, saw every action.

  As though oblivious to the fight going on around him, Howard stepped toward where I lay on the dirty floor. The haze of pain that wouldn’t let me pass out seemed to line him in brightness, while Eddie and Declan’s struggle in the background to subdue the secbots blurred.

  “You’d sacrifice yourself for that thing?” Howard asked me, his face showing his incredulity. “That inhuman creature? You’d die for that freak?”

  “She is my child, and I would die for her, yes.” Speaking took a great effort. Blood burbled to my lips, bringing with it a taste like rust. I swam against the tide of pain, unable to simply give up and let it take me. “Too bad you’ll never know the depth of that love.”

  “You pity me?” Howard loomed over me, his features so familiar to Declan’s, yet so foreign. “You mecho, you freak of nature? You dare to pity me?”

  “I think you deserve my pity,” I tried to say, but nothing came but a whisper and a froth of copper on my tongue.

  Now, at last, the red glimmer of unconsciousness flickered at the edges of my vision. My sight narrowed, until all I saw was Howard’s face, his shoulder as he reached into his pocket, his hand as he brought up a weapon of his own. And then, finally, the dark eye of the gun as he aimed it at my head.

  I waited for the end, and it didn’t come. Howard stiffened, his eyes widened, his arms flung out like a startled infant’s. A hole appeared, black around the edges and red inside, in his chest. Daylight glimmered through it for a brief moment, and then he fell.

  He hit the floor beside me, and the dust kicked up from his landing burned my eyes. I saw Declan through the blur, bending next to his father, and the almost reverent way he slid his hand over Howard’s eyes to close them in unending sleep.

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” I heard him say, then felt the whisper of his breath against my bloodstained lips as he kissed me. “You’ll be fine,” he said. “I promise.”

  Epilogue

  The sun was bright enough I had to shade my eyes against it when I looked out over the beach. Golden sand covered my feet. The breeze tangled my hair, now the color of a Shaddran sunset.

  “Not too far out!” I cried to Kaelyn as she dipped and dove in the waves. Her wings gave her natural buoyancy, and in the gentle waters it would be nearly impossible for her to drown, but I didn’t like to leave anything to chance.

  Her laughter came to me on the salt breeze, and the sound of it filled my heart with a joy so fierce it took my breath away.

  We’d made it, the four of us, to Shaddra, where the sun always shone and the drinks were always cold. Declan’s Intercolony Credit account had been emptied to provide us with this modest cottage, our clothes, our food, and the down payment on a small tourist pub Eddie had discovered was his true calling. Already my former partner had tanned as dark as the natives, and I was certain there’d be a bonding ceremony soon. Scores of tittering, simpering maidens flocked around him all the time, but he had eyes only for U’Elian, a dark-haired beauty with a kind nature who already had a young son.

  “I will watch the children,” U’Elian said to me now, as her boy R’Etan leaped into the surf with Kaelyn. She spoke to me in softly accented English, though I’d been learning Shaddran. “They’ll be fine. Why not go inside and rest for awhile?”

  She lowered herself gracefully to the sand, her bright tunic puddled around her knees. “It will give me pleasure to watch them play, G’Emma.”

  I nodded and stretched to clear my back of its kinks. My recovery from the wounds had been complicated by infection from lack of appropriate medical care. I’d won against the persistent fevers, aided by Shaddra’s lovely weather and nutritious food. I still tired easily, however, and an afternoon rest would be very welcome.

  “Thanks, U’Elian.” I tried the words in Shaddran, and was rewarded with her pleased grin.

  “I think perhaps there’s a love match there.” She nodded toward the children scampering in the water. “You start preparing her dowry now, yes?”

  I laughed at the thought, but couldn’t deny it pleased me to think Kaelyn could find a life here. Love, someday. Happiness. Yes, that idea pleased me very much.

  “My E’Ddie, he works late tonight, serving dinner to tourists.” U’Elian laughed. “I will take K’Aelyn tonight, to play with R’Etan. You have the night to…rest.”

  Her grin told me she knew there’d be little rest involved if Declan and I had the cottage to ourselves. Adjusting to life as a family had been difficult in ways I’d never imagined when Kaelyn and I shared the apartment in Newcity.

  I stifled a yawn with the back of my hand, and couldn’t stop from rubbing my eyes. “I think I will go in and take a nap, after all. I’m tired.”

  U’Elian raised her thin brow ridges until her oval eyes widened. “You’re not sleeping enough at night, yes?” Then she laughed. “Ahh. My E’Ddie is much the same.”

  “I’m glad he found you,” I told her. “He deserves a good woman.”

  She inclined her head. “He is a good man. As is your D’Eclan.”

  I thought about Declan working with Eddie. “He’s never had to work before. I think he’s happy to have something to be proud of.”

  “You should be proud of him, G’Emma. He and my E’Ddie have made a success of that broken down tourist trap. Made it lovely.”

  “They have, haven’t they?” I had to smile at the thought. “They really have.”

  I yawned again, harder this time, and stretched. “Kaelyn!”

  She turned in her play. “Yes, my Gemma?”