“We can’t fight all coming… it is over,” said Roskvir. “You want make stand with me? Then, we can. We… die honorably. But, must do fighting… away from her.” He motioned to Aurelia. “Some hallways distance, maybe. If we go now.”

  “No,” said Kera. “I’ll go.”

  She looked into Roskvir’s eyes. Hoping she, as he before, could convey the earnestness of her moment of clarity: she saw the path ahead.

  Roskvir blinked, dumbfounded.

  “I’ll go. You stay here,” she repeated. “I’ll run. Alone.”

  “They come for both—”

  “They will. But when they find you here, you’ll tell them your loyalty was always with them, wholeheartedly. If they believe you, maybe you'll get a chance to bring the princess to safety some other time.”

  Roskvir shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. But even before he managed to reply, Kera was backing toward the door. She could feel the hostile presences closing in, tightening around them like a net.

  “Let me do this, Roskvir.” she said. “Tell them—”

  “Tell what? No thing can explain why I come here… except, treason. Dalgrandr, who saw me… he saw of us together—“

  “Tell them you fought me off,” said Kera. “That… I was a very powerful vis-wielder. Like nothing you’ve ever seen before. Tell them I was forcing you along, poised to kill you with my vis if you made the wrong move. Until I was about to reach the princess, when you found your chance against me, and resisted.”

  “Are you? A powerful sjaelsvabener?”

  “Tell them you found me outside Atum-Ra. They’ll think I was very powerful, if you tell them that.”

  Someone aboard that ship had to know of her mother’s device, if their soldiers had sought it in the ruins.

  “I know it seems slim, Roskvir,” she said. “But maybe, just maybe, they’ll believe you… and we have to try.”

  * * *

  An unfamiliar fear surged through Roskvir, as he realized that Kerauna might be right.

  The door was already half-open as she waited for his assent. And he knew they needed to act at once, if they were to act at all. It would be only seconds more before the marines were upon them.

  Still, he couldn’t help but hesitate. He wanted Kera to wait for just one moment more, if he could not have the whole world wait as long. Aurelia’s life could very well hinge on their decision.

  But he felt a tugging at his waist, then.

  A small hand gripped the bottom of his uniform jacket. Pulling him back, getting his attention. Looking up at him, Aurelia shook her head.

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  “Let her,” the girl whispered. She gave him a pat, as if reassuring a child younger than herself. “We’ll be okay.”

  There was suddenly a sharp lump in his throat.

  Kerauna still lingered by the entrance, he saw, as the drum of approaching soldiers trampled over the floor above. How selfish, how foolish he’d been, he thought, to keep her there, so many seconds longer. Ready as she was to sacrifice her life.

  Cowards, he remembered someone claiming.

  He took Aurelia’s hand in his own, and nodded to Kera.

  “Go.”

  * * *

  Kera’s heart was already at pace, as she bolted from the princess’ quarters. The rest of her body needed only to match it. She felt a brief urge to look back one last time at the strange ally she’d found in Roskvir, and the brave young princess, but she resisted.

  Instead, she simply ran.

  Flying past a corridor intersection, a glimpse of bright colors and white uniforms confirmed what she’d already sensed: that enemy soldiers were almost upon her and Roskvir both. She was glad to hear shouts of surprise, as she continued past in her sprint unabated. The more she could draw away, the better.

  She pushed herself harder, as desperation unlocked hidden reserves of stamina. Her lead wouldn’t last, with her pursuers then unburdened by fear of ambush. But whether there was even the slightest chance she could survive was beside the point. It would be good to put as much distance as possible between herself and the princess' chamber, she knew by instinct, as though distance might somehow lend Roskvir credibility.

  Rounding a corner, she met a hallway bristling with white-coated soldiers on the prowl with vis concealed. But before missing a beat she changed course, darting down the straightaway out of sight before the troop could raise their carbines. The warship was so vast, it seemed difficult to saturate any one area with enough defenders to seal off every avenue of escape.

  But they were still closing in, she could sense. She couldn’t ascertain their nearness to Roskvir and Aurelia then, far behind as she’d left them. But the net around herself shrank inexorably. With each stride, the density of presences grew thicker. And of course there would be more lurking sweepers with vis hidden, less ready to defend themselves against gunfire’s instant effect, but more so able to ambush her in turn.

  All the better that she had no rifle, saber, or even a vis useful to defend herself, she thought. So she wouldn’t be tempted to stand and fight, rather than run where she knew she must.

  Her muscles and bones, abdomen and lungs all screamed in unison in the sustained maximum of her athletic ability. The recently-repaired fracture in her clavicle was like a dagger, stabbing with each pump of her arms. Still she ran, focused only on how she needed to die on her own terms, rather than from some enemy’s wound. Roskvir’s fate depended on it. He could hardly claim to his countrymen that she was some powerful wielder of vis if she was felled by simple rifle fire.

  The air grew colder. Her muscles burned twice as intense, as if aware she was nearing her destination.

  A portholed pressure door at last signalled the boundary of the warship undercarriage. She slammed into the locking mechanism and at once heaved down the tarnished wheel. Officers’ shouted orders grew louder, familiar even in those alien tones. The wheel creaked, then turned, and she leapt into the airlock and pulled it back shut as her nearest pursuers poured into the other end of the corridor.

  What scarce breath she had was swept away, as she pushed the exterior door open to the storm. The night was frigid and soaking wet, smothered under a black quilt of night-cloud. But she pressed on, out onto the catwalk, even as she gasped to refill her lungs. At first doubting her balance on the thin grating, before scoffing at caution.

  Before long she was far from the airlock, and almost a quarter-way to the next, even while slipping every other step on the rain-slick steel.

  But then she saw movement in the darkness not far ahead. Another troop, coming her way.

  She stopped in her tracks. It was time. No more stalling.

  She would’ve liked to have gotten a little bit farther away from Roskvir and the princess. Not that it would really matter. It probably wouldn’t help much one way or another, not really, she knew.

  She stepped up onto the railing.

  Teetering, she looked back at the great, terrible warship one last time, wishing for even the slightest chance that it wouldn’t all be for nothing.

  But her pursuers forced open the airlock behind her then, rifles raised as they stormed out.

  And so at last Kera cast herself off the catwalk, and fell into the atmosphere below.

  "...This process, called the relativistic runaway electron avalanche, has been hypothesized to lead to electrical breakdown in thunderstorms, but only when a source of high-energy electrons from a cosmic ray is present to start the "runaway" process..."

  Wikipedia