The First Nova I See Tonight by Jason Kilgore (the false prince .txt) 📕

Dirken sat down hard and dropped the arc blade, now nicked where it had met vertebrae. The blue-colored sparks had stopped, drained of energy.

He struggled to catch his breath and put his back against the wall, then looked out upon the sea of burning trees where the Dragonfire had crashed. Another explosion blew apart a small pyramid next to the crash site, sending a rain of three-thousand-year-old stonework almost as far as where he sat and shaking the earth. He didn't even flinch. So much for earning a new ship, he thought, but at least I'm still alive.

CHAPTER FORTY

YOU CRAZY FUCKER!

"Yiorgos!" Dirken exclaimed, suddenly remembering his partner. He had barely caught his breath from the battle, but he snatched up the Bloodhawk's plasma scimitar, the only working weapon left to him, and found a collapsed part of the structure a few meters away that he could climb back up.

The top of the pyramid was a scene of carnage. Awash with blood. Dead Acolytes. Dead pirates. Shattered communications arrays. Blasted stonework. Sparking electrical lines. The surviving pirates had fled.

Juarez still clung to life. He looked up at Dirken through dazed eyes, huffing and pale, then pointed a bloody finger and said, "You… you have to —"

"Shut up," Dirken said. "This is all your doing!" He turned to the entryway. Relieved, he saw Yiorgos step out and meet him.

"Your arm!" Yiorgos exclaimed.

Dirken didn't want to think about that, and it didn't hurt. Or he was still in shock and not feeling it. But he couldn't move it correctly. Muscles had been severed. He shook his head and eyed Yiorgos with a clear message to leave the topic alone for now.

Yiorgos ripped off a strip of robe from the dead Aussie and used it to bind Dirken's arm as he talked. "The remaining pirates fled when they saw you kill the Bloodhawk. The UW feds are rounding them up now." He glanced toward the stairs on the west side, toward the plaza. "But the feds are headed up the pyramid for us right now. We need to go."

From the plaza, below, came the cries and blaster fire of a pitched battle between the remaining pirates and the feds.

"And Eow? Where is she?"

"She left. She took the Heart — AVA — and ran. I was in no shape to fight her."

"Come on, then!"

Dirken ran around the top level to the back of the stone building with Yiorgos following. No sooner had they reached the other side when they saw the yellow fightercraft rise up over the treetops and zoom away eastward.

A pang of sadness flitted through Dirken, but he quickly shook it off and pointed the plasma scimitar at the retreating ship. "That bitch! She stole my fighter. Again!"

A thought struck him. "That's how the Bloodhawk knew to find us. He followed the fighter's signal! And Eow probably followed 'TakTrak."

"United Worlds security will be here any minute." Yiorgos slumped back against the stone wall of the building. "Fleeing into the jungle really doesn't appeal to me after the march we took. We're both injured, not to mention my head is scrambled from being in the brain of a damned supercomputer. Maybe we should just surrender? We stopped the bad guys, after all. The feds will be lenient."

"Sure they will, since we aided and abetted traitors." Dirken looked around at the surrounding jungle, the burning remains of the Dragonfire, and then back around the stone building toward the front of the pyramid. The Bloodhawk's corvette, the Speartip, was still settled in the plaza below the acropolis. A dozen pirates, arms or flaps in the air, were being led single-file off the ship by armed UW security at blaster-point.

Dirken looked back to Yiorgos and shook off a wave of dehydration and exhaustion. He pulled out his lucky runestone and ran his thumb over the carved design while his mind turned. He nodded to himself, gave the runestone a kiss, and stuck it back in its hidden pocket. "Come on, I've got a plan."

"Oh shit. Here we go!"

"Trust me," Dirken said, and started down the crumbled staircase on the far side of the pyramid. The going was steep, and the stonework was crumbling, but they descended faster than he'd imagined they could. The deep wound on his arm started stinging part-way down, and by the time they got to the bottom the pain was bad enough to make him grit his teeth with almost every movement. He needed to immobilize it.

Once to the ground, they ran for cover behind a wall of stone and checked to see that the coast was clear. United Worlds security had made it to the top of the tower, blasters pulled. Dirken watched as they secured the top of the pyramid and the little stone building, then attended to Governor Juarez. Dirken recognized the man leading them. It was Prasad, the white-haired first mate from the UW destroyer. Prasad raised an arm and spoke into a device there. Dirken could just make out, "Excellentia, Team One. It's Governor Juarez!"

As Dirken and Yiorgos turned to go into the forest, they saw a small band of pirates still trading blaster-fire with the feds. It would serve as a good distraction.

They ran through the woods, moving around the back of the acropolis. They entered a thick cloud of smoke and soon saw trees on fire only a dozen meters to their right, from the crash of the brigantine. The wind picked up and blew scorching hot air and embers over them. But the plume provided excellent cover.

"Where are we going?" Yiorgos asked, coughing.

"The Speartip," Dirken said, leading the cyborg through the forest.

"Are you mad? That's right into the feds!"

"Exactly!" Dirken edged down an ancient rock-walled alley lined with curious Mayan symbols. "They won't expect it. And most of them are off fighting the pirates."

"Then what? Surely you don't plan to…?"

"Yes, I do. Like I told you when we left the Excellentia, I plan to board her and take her