A harsh grunt chuffed over the audio connection followed by what sounded like ripping metal.
What in the galaxy? I frowned down at Shade. Through the shadows, his eyes met mine in mutual question.
“Merrick?” Shade followed me up the ladder.
“On my way.” Pounding feet. A door whooshed again. More gunfire.
“You go first, Fi.” Jax sounded so tired. I glanced down again, uneasy.
“Not a chance.” Fiona planted herself like one of her bushes. “You go first, or I’m not moving.”
Jax stuck out an arm and herded Fiona toward the ladder. She dug in her heels, skidding over the top of the elevator.
“Don’t be stubborn,” Jax grated. “Just go.”
“No,” she growled.
“Come on, Fi!” I snapped down at her. “Merrick’s coming. Let’s not give the Dark Watch more time to get into position to kill us.” At least four hovercrafts waited outside with armed soldiers just itching to shoot the blood and guts out of us. At this point, we only stood a chance because Merrick was a super soldier and Shade had wisely set explosives.
“If we’re all out, I’m afraid he’ll just sit down and give up!” Scowling, Fiona tried to shove Jax forward. “You first.”
“Quit it, or I’ll fucking carry you up,” Jax snarled.
“Fine.” She stepped right up to him, challenging Jax to do just that. They stood toe-to-toe, glaring at each other.
“Jax isn’t a quitter,” I said. “Now move it. Both of you.”
Unfortunately, a tiny part of me wondered if Fiona was right. Sometimes, when Jax shut down and got that misery-clouded far-off look in his eyes, I worried there was a chance he wouldn’t fight so hard to make it out of some bad situation the next time. I knew for a fact he would have walked straight into a toxic explosion seven years ago on Hourglass Mile if a terrified nineteen-year-old girl hadn’t literally been dumped on his head as a prison partner. Keeping me safe had kept him alive. But now, I had Shade in my corner. Would that make a difference to Jax?
I sure as hell hoped not.
“Fiona, get on the ladder. Jax will follow when there’s room.” Right now, we couldn’t move anyway. I was at the top, Shade was behind me, and Fiona could barely fit a foot on.
A stab of daylight suddenly appeared, piercing my eyes with brightness. I blinked as huge hands gripped the edges of the doors like claws, prying the panels apart with a crunch of metal. Merrick’s shiny black face appeared, dripping sweat and grinning when he saw us. Some kind of shield protected his back and now me from a constant barrage of gunfire.
“What is that?” I slipped through the crack and stood in the shelter of Merrick’s big rectangular shadow. He’d strapped a huge metal panel to his back with cargo belts and bungee cords from the Endeavor. Shade came out behind me.
“Your kitchen door.” Merrick gathered us close and covered all three of us as we ran in a cluster toward the ship’s open entrance. Bullets pinged off the shield. Sparks flew, streaks of orange in my peripheral vision.
“My door?” Shock gave way to admitting it was good thinking. The panel was taller and wider than Merrick and made of the same space-worthy armored metal as the rest of the ship. I grinned. “Who needs privacy in a kitchen?” It was a communal space anyway.
Merrick cracked a smile as he scooted forward at a side shuffle, shielding us. The bottom of the door grated against the platform, adding to the almost deafening cacophony of automatic weapons, engines, and megaphones blaring orders we were never going to listen to.
“Genius,” Shade yelled, keeping his head low and his feet moving.
Something more powerful than a bullet slammed into the door panel. Merrick lurched, just barely keeping his balance and nearly knocking Shade and me over. An explosion boiled around us, sudden and searing. We huddled behind the shield. I gasped, squeezing my eyes shut until the blaze subsided.
“Go!” Merrick urged us onward. At the open starboard air lock, he angled his armored back toward the hovercrafts as Shade and I vaulted up into the ship and scrambled behind opposite sides of the doorframe. Three Grayhawks waited in my corner. I slid two toward Shade and picked up the other. We both flattened ourselves against the walls and hammered off shots at the Dark Watch. Merrick hurried back toward Jax and Fiona at a loping side step, his shield gouging the tarmac.
“You take the ones on the left. I’ve got the right,” Shade shouted over utter chaos. I nodded and kept shooting, my hearing dulled by the roar of gunfire.
“Good thinking with the explosives!” I could see them now that I was looking in the right direction, mines of some kind dotting the outer section of the platform. “What are they?”
“Incendio charges,” Shade answered.
“Never heard of them,” I hollered back.
“Big noise. Big fire. Not a huge range of actual destruction but intense at the source. Not a good idea to land on them.”
I nodded. Shade’s forward thinking was the only reason the hovercrafts hadn’t touched down and goons weren’t swarming the dock right now.
“That’s my whole supply. Was hoping to get them back.” Shade tossed me a roguish smile that curled around my racing heart and steadied it. “Not looking so good.”
No, but the incendios had saved our butts so far—along with Merrick. “Those won’t stop them from fast-roping it down.” While discreet, the explosives were visible and avoidable to feet, even if a whole hovercraft couldn’t wiggle a landing spot around them.
“Then keep shooting, starshine. They’re not going to pop over the sides and slide down with us aiming at them.”
Probably not. Goons were well known for their highly developed sense of self-preservation. It almost rivaled their penchant for abusing power. The two likely went together.
A new sound punched my ears like bad music—the whine and thump of more sophisticated engines. The individual cruisers Merrick had picked up earlier on the radar buzzed our tower. A group of them raced over the city skyline before swinging back around, noses—and weapons—pointed toward us.
Dread cramped hard in my stomach. Shade and I glanced at each other. Those cruisers would have firepower the Endeavor’s outer armor couldn’t deflect as easily as bullets.
My gaze flicked toward the elevator tubes. Jax and Fiona were out. A small missile exploded against the shield, and I cried out in fear for them. Merrick nearly buckled, but Jax helped prop him up while Fiona burrowed into Jax’s chest, hiding her face from the blast. Grimacing against the heat, Jax used his free arm to protect the back of Fiona’s head.
I quickly scanned the hovercrafts, found the source of the missile, aimed, and fired. My bullet sparked off the launcher and the soldier wielding it ducked behind the armored wall of the hovercraft. Merrick and the others started running again. I unloaded bullets toward the same spot and didn’t let up until my gun clicked, empty.